Flash RAM requires no battery, as it holds it's contents through some
other magic of science, but it is slower and has limited "write-ability",
that is, it can only be written-to a number of times. But that "number"
is in the several hundred-thousand range, I believe, so it is not really
a practical limitation for most applications. Flash RAM will use more
power from the Zoomer when it is being accessed, but that just means your
Zoomer batteries will die-off just a little sooner... not a real issue.
A technical note from /pub/palm at ftp.netcom.com mentions that the Flash
mem cards that work must be the 5-volt type. I know there was some other
confusion about this matter in some other postings. These tech notes
from Palm are very good reading... I encourage all to check them out if
you haven't already!
Don't have my mem card yet, so I can't tell you if apps need to be
written to memory before executing, but I would almost guranatee that the
answer is NO! According to the manuals, though, your DATA does need to
be written to the memory first, and then copied out to Flash, or
something like that. I'll have to let someone else answer this better.
-Randy Riecks