My MPower's battery behavior is nothing like yours, so yes I would suspect
something is a bit wrong with it. I get the battery low worning for way
longer than I would like to put up with the interruptions to my reading or
browsing. The level does drop farely fast while using wireless, but I
still have time to do something before the battery dies when it is kind of
low. I think that the processor in the MPower uses far less power when it
is turned off than the classic's did. It uses battery a little faster
while on, but I don't think it is drastically more.
Sarah Van Oosterwijck
Assistive Technology Trainer
http://home.earthlink.net/~netentity
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vicky Collins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Braillenote List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 09, 2006 11:36 PM
Subject: [Braillenote] mPower battery again
Hi All,
Well, I'm not sure what the status of the battery problems with the
mPower
is these days. But, I'm tending to think that my BT32 mPower which I've
had
for a couple of months now may be among
those having some sort of problem.
When I first charge up the battery, the charge level seems to drop,
overall,
kind of slowly at first, maybe five or six percent a day--well, unless
I'm
using
wireless and the internet a lot, in which case of course it drops much
more.
And, one time after
charging the unit, I didn't do much with it for a couple of days, came
back
to it and it still showed 96% battery level, and then it dropped to 92%
after I retrieved and read a little over a hundred email.
But, the thing I notice the most, is just how all of a sudden the battery
will lose power and switch off. Now, after it switches off, I don't have
to
do a service reset as I did the first couple of times; but, rather, I
just
have to plug in the charger. Of course, though, I do have to
re-establish
my ActiveSync partnership.
So, I'm kind of concerned on just how quickly the unit loses
power, and just how very little notice I have before this happens. (Or,
grin, maybe I'm just spoiled by the battery performance of my PK, or am
just
paying too much attention to the talk about folks letting their battery
get
almost down to zero.) I always
tend to turn the unit off when not in use, and I always tend to remove
any
cards from the unit when they're not being used. Also, when not in use,
I
keep the Bluetooth and wireless turned off as well.
Last Thursday night I believe it was, I could have sworn I checked the
battery and it showed thirty some percent charge remaining. Then, when I
got up the next morning, of course I didn't think to check the unit
again.
But, I got on the city bus to go to work, used my cell phone via
Bluetooth
to retrieve and read four email messages, and then proceeded to
disconnect
the phone and pair with my Earthmate Blue Logger GPS receiver. Then,
after
I had the receiver paired and trying to acquire satellites for about five
minutes, I got the battery low message. I got it again about a minute
later, followed in just a few seconds by the battery critical message.
Then, before I could even get the Bluetooth turned off on the mPower, the
unit had shut itself off.
Also, I had a similar experience over the weekend, although I do admit to
being connected to the internet and streaming audio via wireless at the
time
and purposely trying to see what the battery would do in this situation.
Still, though, I
only got the battery low message once, and then the battery critical
message, and once again didn't have time to turn off the wireless
connection before the mPower shut itself off. And, oh, the battery level
showed eight percent just before the
battery critical message when using the GPS, and fourteen percent just
before that message when using the wireless. And, I mean only seconds
before that battery critical message came in either case.
I did a recalibration of my battery, starting yesterday and then it
finished
up while I was sleeping last night. But, here are some notes I took from
that recalibration info:
The calibration discharge took eight hours, thirteen minutes.
Has now been recharging for (number of minutes.)
Critical time: 41 seconds-fail.
Waiting for the battery to recharge.
Final charge.
Battery test completed.
Gauge is accurate.
Calibrated capacity is 1525.
Nominal available charge with pressing the letter c was 1468, then it
changed to 1469.
Last measured discharge 1525.
Designed capacity 1800.
Both these last two from pressing the letter d.
Then after exiting support information mode and hitting options then p I
got
a level of 96%.
Finally, when looking at the mPower manual, I can't help but notice the
big
difference in the numbers given in their examples of typical responses
when
using the support information mode. To determine the charge available
from
the battery by pressing the letter c, their example of a typical message
for
nominal available charge is 9,800. And, to review the last measured
discharge count of the battery with the letter d, their example of a
typical
discharge message is last measured discharge 16,000. Now, I of course
know
that these are only examples and that my numbers would be different, but
I'm kind of puzzled that they are so far off from these examples.
___
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