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If you own a Treo 680 and have noticed that battery life has been absolutely horrendous, you have experienced the result of a bug in the original firmware of the Treo that causes the battery draining issue.

Apparently, as soon as you launch the camera application on the Treo 680 and regardless of whether you close or exit out of it or not, you will notice that the battery will drain so quickly that within a few hours that the battery level will be virtually close to 0. This is due to a bug in the firmware that fails to properly close or exit out of the camera application. So, even if you close or exit out of the camera application, the software is still running and loaded in the background and thus why the battery is draining so quickly over time. So, once you open or launch the camera on the Treo 680, you will notice this battery draining issue.

Palm has provided an update for the Treo 680 to address and fix this issue. The link to the camera patch is here. Keep in mind that if you do a hard reset or factory reset that you will need to re-install this patch again after the reset or you will face the same battery draining issue.

I have provided a video of the simple camera patch installation process so that you can be familiar with how it's done and what happens during the installation. As you will find out, it's very simple, painless and quick to do. So there's no need to worry or panic.

Video of Treo 680 Camera Patch Installlation

Video at YouTube

Again, it is very easy to perform and here's the link to the camera update patch. Treo 680 camera patch update

I hope you found the video helpful. Thanks for visiting Palm Discovery.net.

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Posted by webmaster as palm, howto, quicktips at 5:16 PM EDT

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Palm Discovery's Audible coverage will be limited and decreased

Since the site is somewhat changing in terms of the schedule due to my more limited available time for writing, and also due a reader's comment, I will be decreasing the Audible coverage to maybe once a week or even just periodic postings of free files. I haven't decided yet. If you would like me to continue coverage of the Audible files, please let me know in the comments or via the Contact Form. I don't want to waste my time writing material that you don't want, so unless I hear otherwise, I will stop the frequent Audible coverage. That will also mean that the postings will be even less frequent, but on the brighter side, you can spend more time with other blogs and or with family instead. Regardless, I am very happy and grateful for your continued support of this site.

Don't forget about the Nutshell PDA case giveaway still going on until May 23rd. Simply leave a comment in the written review posting (not the video or anywhere else) to be entered.

There are some of us who want to keep a record or log of all the text messages we receive and send out and although there are some Palm programs that are available, most of them aren't free. Knowing how most of us would prefer a freeware option than pay for it, here's a program that can convert the sms text messages in your Palm into a spreadsheet format (.csv) so that you can view and manipulate them in a spreadsheet program like Excel.

Unfortunately, as with most freeware programs, it isn't a one step solution and you will need to do a bit of manual work to do the conversion. But fret not, I have provided a step by step tutorial on how it's done. The explanation seems lengthy but the overall process is quick so don't worry. Watch the flash demo I've provided near the end and you can see how easy it can be.

Again, keep in mind that this isn't my idea. (I'm certainly not that smart, if at all.) I think I've collected this information from Treocentral and other blogs and forums thought I'd make it easier for someone to find this information with a Flash demo on how it's done.

There are some things will need:

- access to a computer since the conversion work will be done on the computer (surprise, surprise)

- the sms database file (Messages_Database.PDB) (normally found in the (C:\Program Files\Palm\YourHotsyncID\Backup\ (this is only as current as what's there since your last hotsync).

Or you can also extract it (Messages_Database.PDB) from your Treo's RAM (use FileZ to copy to the SD card) to the computer via beaming, bluetooth, card reader, email, etc)

And it needs to be placed in the same folder as the sms2csv program.

You'll first need to get the software program. Get it from http://multik.org/sms2csv/. The file is in a compressed format (.zip) so you'll need to first decompress it first using something like WinZip or similar. Again, if you have Windows XP, you should have a utility to unzip a zip file.

Go to the folder where your sms2csv program is located on your computer. Make a note of the path so that it will be easier when you enter it later. You may want to move the folder to somewhere that will be easier to type (eg. C:\sms2csv\ as opposed to C:\Docume~1\MyComputer\Desktop\sms2csv\ (replace MyComputer with your own computer login id) )

Next, you'll need to bring up the DOS window. Most people suggest doing the CMD in the Run. I set a shortcut that I launch by clicking on it.

Find and click on the Window's Start button (bottom left hand corner) to bring up a pop up menu. Select Run... (third from the bottom, above Log Off... and Shut Down).

You'll see another pop up Window. Type the letters cmd as I've shown in the screenshot.

You will see the blackboard like DOS screen similar to what's above.

Depending on where your sms2csv folder is located, you will need to first navigate to the folder. In my example, since I have put the sms2csv folder in the root directory of C: drive, I simply need to go to that folder. As in the image above, I typed in cd sms2csv.051 (that was the folder name that was extracted from the zip file). If your folder is named differently, you'll need to replace the sms2csv.051 to whatever you've named it. If done correctly, you'll see that it is now in the correct folder ( C:\sms2csv.051\> ) and you don't see any error messages.

Now, here's where you will need to adjust for yourself depending on your timezone and what you want to name your csv file to be.

For me, since I'm in the -8 GMT timezone, I will be entering the -g-8 and the name of the csv will be messages.csv. If you want it named something else, you will have to replace the messages.csv to whatever you want it named as. Everything else should be entered in the same format as what you see, including the spaces and whatever character you see.

In my example, this is what I enter (again, the spaces are important since we're talking about DOS)

sms2csv -g-8 "Messages_Database.pdb" > messages.csv

This is the most straightforward way to do it. You can filter the result in the way you wish as was documented in the ReadMe file.

Usage: sms2csv {-gNN} {-ds|deYYMMDD} {-ts|teHHMM| {c} {-y} in_file_name

-gNN GMT offset (with DST) in hours (From -12 to 12, but value not limited). Default is 0

-c in outpust use ';' delimiter instead of ','

-ds/de - limit to show messages by date. 'ds/de' mean 'date start/date end'

-ts/te - additional limit by time 'time start/time end'

YY -last 2 digits of year, MM month (01-12)

DD - day (01-31), HH - hour (00-23) MM - minutes (00-59)

If done correctly, again, you won't see any error messages and it just goes back to the folder C:\sms2csv.051\> as you see in the previous screenshot image.

You will now find the newly created messages.csv file in that folder. If done correctly, you can open it up with Microsoft Excel and come up with something similar to this:

And that's how you can convert your SMS Messages in a CSV format that you can keep track of in a spreadsheet.

With all the screenshots and explanation, it may seem complicated but here's a Flash simulation/demonstration to show that it's really not that hard. Just takes a few seconds.

Flash simulation of how to use sms2csv