So, I own a Palm Zire 72, a highly useful, functional, goofy looking blue PDA with a built-in digital camera that I use sometimes. All in all, not a bad device, especially since it has Bluetooth, which I finally found a use for by buying a folding bluetooth-enabled wireless keyboard.
Anyhow, one of the few problems I’ve had with this, aside from the nuisance of the lack of a jog-wheel like on the old Sony Cliès, is the High Pitched Youth-Repelling Screen Whine of Aural Insanity. Basically, apparently because the digitizer (not sure what that is) comes in contact with the LCD screen, the screen emits a high-pitched mosquito-like whine that just drives you nuts if you have to listen to it for long.
There are two ways to fix it. One involves a torx screw driver, attention to detail, some luck, and possibly horrific death, though that last bit is highly unlikely provided you don’t do the operation in the middle of a highway. The other way involved installing a program called WarpSpeed, which is designed for overclocking PDAs (yaknow, in case your address book just isn’t fast enough), and which has an unexplained ability to “Somehow fix the screen whine problem sometimes”.
So, I install the program, click the checkbox for “Fix screen whine (if available)”, and viola, the whine is gone!
“Somehow” is “reduce the LCD refresh rate.” This was a particular problem with the Zire72s. I personally didn’t even notice it much when I owned one, though it was plainly evident if I held it near my ear or if it was really quiet where I was at the time, but even then I tended to tune it out after a minute or so. Although I had an overclocker installed (Afterburner) I only ever used it occasionally when I was emulating some system and game that needed the extra juice. I never used the “whine fix” because I found it made the display a little less crisp in that moving your eyes from the top of the screen to the bottom allowed you to see the LCD screen redraws. That annoyed me more than the whine did.
Ahh, that would make sense. When i switch applications, the screen flickers abruptly sometimes. I was a bit concerned, but if that’s just a lower refresh rate, then I think I can live with that.
Yeah, it isn’t detrimental to the unit in any way, it’s just a little distracting sometimes. An added bonus to that fix is a slight boost in battery life at the expense of a slightly dimmer screen with minor flicker. I’m particularly sensitive to flicker though so it was a bit much for me.
Well, my biggest complaint with the Zire is it’s uberobnoxiously bright screen anyways. If I could only turn off the damned backlight, the thing probably wouldn’t need to be plugged in every night.
See the little sun icon on the top right of the numeric portion of the data input area? (Just above and to the left of the star-shaped soft key) Tap that. It’ll bring up the brightness control. You can’t completely turn off the backlight but you can dim it.
While I’m happy for you that you fixed it, I’d be happier if you told the rest of us (some of us that are much less computer savvy as well) sufferers how to do it also.
I googled it and got this: warpspeed
Please explain. Thanks.
Although I might have to ask about how to uninstall if the flicker bothers me, it appears. But for the moment, deleting the whine seems more important than the flicker since I mostly listen to my Palm and not read it.
Well, you need to download it here, then install the file in the usual manner (open the file, then sync your palm), and then after your Palm resets, find the Warpspeed program wherever it ended up in your applications, open it, go to Preferences, and there should be a checkbox for the screen whine.
That said, it’s shareware, and evidentally you can only use it for free for a week. I dunno what happens after a week.
That’s just the thing, even when it’s dim, it’s a lot brighter than I’d like. I miss the monochrome screen with the green backlight from my old Sony Cliè.
If you’re looking for a free solution, try Freeclock. It may have some stability issues and you may need to relaunch it every time you reset the system, but it’s free.
