So I finally download Palm’s mojo SDK hoping it will be a quick and glorious download and install operation – but boy was I wrong! I run into quite a number of problems before finally getting it to work.

First, installing on my 64-bit copy of Windows 7 was a no-no! Installation will begin and progress to the end only to roll back everything and tell me it was interrupted. Wow, really? Interrupted by what? Retired a 2nd and 3rd time (and even a 4th time, i think) only to get the same error. Strange.

Okay, well I booted into my Windows Vista (64-bit) partition and repeated the installation process. As usual, I went with all the default setup options and ended up installing the SDK to C:\Program Files (x86). It was after that I found out online that the SDK doesn’t do too well with the parentheses in the path – ugh!

Looking for a way out, I thought to myself……..hmm, maybe 64-bit Windows is really out of the question (because Palm claim’s it’s not currently supported, or kind of), and decided to attempt installing it on Ubuntu 8.04 which I have set up in VirtualBox on Windows Vista (see sweetness of Sun xVM VirtualBox). Doing so, installation went well and I didn’t encounter any errors/problems starting up the emulator. The splash screen showed up for a few seconds and then an instance of VirtualBox was started but with a blank screen. The blank screen just sat there and stared me in the face like “what do you expect me to do? load some kind an interface?” Why I was getting a blank screen? I have no idea! Fine, forget the SDK on Linux via VirtualBox. What in the world am I doing wrong here? Everyone in every forum online seems to have happily installed the SDK.

Several forums recommended installing the SDK to a path such as C:\Palm, which I humbly followed later on, hoping I’d come across the remedy; oh but now guess what? The SDK can’t figure out where I have VirtualBox installed and thinks I might have an older version installed. I got the error:

“Palm emulator requires that virtualbox 2.2.0 or higher is installed”

Wow, really? Umm, now what?
Googling didn’t help much. So after playing around for a bit, I remembered that I have 2 Program Files directories. One is simply “Program Files” and the other is “Program Files (x86)”. I also realized that the “Program Files” directory also contained a subdirectory (…\Program Files\Sun) where virtualbox was installed. Hmm, that might work.

Not feeling like going through the whole process of uninstalling and reinstalling the SDK in  Program Files, I simply copied and pasted the entire Palm directory from C:\Program Files (x86) to C:\Program Files and then double-clicked on palm-emulator.exe (inside the bin folder) – AND THAT’S WHEN IT WORKED!

Here’s a screenshot.

Palm Mojo SDK emulator (Windows Vista 64-bit)

By the way, I came across a solution to the Windows 7 RC (64-bit) installation issue here. I haven’t gone through with it to verify that it works though.

Can’t wait till that bad boy is released. I currently have a Palm Treo running windows mobile 5, and I mean it’s a great phone and all but I could sure use something new – something webOS . I’m not an iPhone person, probably because I’m not with AT&T, and also because I’m not into the whole virtual keyboard thing. My iPod touch gets me frustrated enough – especially when I’m trying to backspace and keep hitting the L key – uuuggh!!!! This post is not an iPhone vs. Palm Pre opinionated argument. You can find a lot of them online. I’m just interested in the Pre and everything about it – webOS, Mojo SDK etc. so I suppose you can say I’m prethinking…

www.prethinking.com