On Battery Life

[tamaranth]

Let's just clarify quite how distressing I find the <6-hour charge on my T3:

Visor Neo: 2 AAA batteries inserted halfway back from Plymouth, 24th May. 'Your batteries are EXTREMELY low' message appeared while I was on the beach on Tuesday, 8th June. And I had spare batteries in ladymoonray's car (or could've bought them at the 'supermarket' in Camber).

Tungsten T3: battery charged to 100% before leaving for work this morning. Came home early due to proto-migraine so spent an hour on the futon reading an e-book (less effort on achy limbs). Have just had 'Your batteries are low, some functions may be disabled'. To be fair, battery is still around 20%: I should get another hour or so out of it, if I don't mind being nagged.

If anything, I'd been using the Visor more -- haven't yet done any keyboardy writing on the T3. (100-word drabbles ahoy! Though had better not attempt anything ambitious in case it dies on me.) I've been using the same apps on both -- Wordsmith for writing, Palm Reader for reading, a bit of 4Corners for solitaire games, occasional glance at Tidetool, plus Calendar / Address / To-do.

A conservative estimate, then:

A pair of AAA batteries lasts sixteen times as a T3 battery charge.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Some power-saving questions ...

1) Are you leaving bluetooth turned on? That eats battery juice.

2) Automatic beam receive? Ditto.

3) What level is the backlight at? Turning it right down virtually triples the battery life, when compared to leaving it at maximum brightness.

Finally, if all of the above is right, you may have a dodgy battery (although I haven't heard of that being a T3 problem). Or you may just have power-hungry habits. In which case, you need either a Power-to-Go sled (carries around 3 full charges for a T3, clips to the back), or one of the slightly fiddlier 4xAA cell chargers (again, around 3 full charges from a set of 4 alkaline AA cells).

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Bluetooth off: beam receive off: Backlight right down: no alarms: nice monochome low-contrast colour scheme ...

And I don't think it's a dodgy battery, as everyone seems to regard 6 hours as good battery life!

I've ordered an 4xAA battery pack, but ewwwww, not exactly sleek / streamlined / easily portable.

What I need, and no one seems to make, is a PDA which combines monochrome display (I understand it's colour that eats juice) with the ability to store more than a couple of novels* at a time.

And apparently the T3 battery has the same issue as early iPod batteries, e.g. it will degrade over time.

Pah. Modern technology? Gimme late 90s any day.

*by Neal Stephenson: or will settle for complete works of Patrick O'Brian

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you want to find a second-hand Handera 330 (http://www.handera.com/Products/HandEra330.aspx). (Now discontinued, it's a PalmOS machine with SD and CF card slots, gray-scale screen, and a 320x240 display -- runs on AAA cells or a replaceable LiON pack.) The only current gray-scale PalmOS machine I know of is the Alphasmart Dana (http://www.alphasmart.com/), which is so very different it's almost certainly not what you want.

Surpluscomputers.com are offloading a stock room of Handera 330's on eBay (US) for US $79 (buy it now price), but bidding is in the $30-$50 range, so you may be able to pick up a bargain, if you have an American friend who can act as a post office for you (they'll only ship within the US).

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

The Handera seems pretty much equivalent to the Visor Neo, albeit with nicer display: moderately tempted but may just stock up on second-hand Neos (and hope to find one of the memory modules on eBay. 8MB really isn't enough ...! The Alphasmart looks horrid: what were they thinking?

Many thanks for the advice! Don't suppose you'd care to speculate on a timescale for affordable Palm-OS with tolerable battery life?

[tanais.livejournal.com]

I still regard the Cambridge Z88 as the quitessential writing-on-the-move tool. No boot lag, no HDD, it is silent, I got several weeks of power from 4 x (?) AA batteries, backup I can pop in an envelope and mail home via EPROM and a display that gave you one and a half paragraphs per screen which REALLY taught me about brevity and precision (not that I show it on my Blog) . It's also rugged and while larger than a Palm etc it is still smaller than my 12-inch iBook.

My Treo 600 (with all the useless shite switched off) gives me three to four days as a Phone and PDA I've never measured what it would be like as a PDA-alone but I suspect a lot more...

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's what I need -- weeks of battery life and reasonable display. Something to rotate the display on my dear Neo (which I can't use on the same PC as the Tungsten, as it's too damned retro) would help ...