Hi, Paul I totally agree with all your sentiments and my experience has been similar to yours; incidentally, I primarily use the Braille display by itself and only rarely switch the speech on and so can factor out speech putting an extra strain on the battery. I have also had my battery replaced and found no improvement. On top of all that, re-calibration doesn't work for me either!
I believe the claims in the manual over the expected battery are a tad misleading! Regards Richard Bartholomew E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Henrichsen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Braillenote List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 11:15 PM Subject: battery drain. Was [Braillenote] A suggestion regarding alarms > Hi, Terry. I guess this alarm suggestion stems from the fact that I still > really dislike the amount of battery drain on my bn. > I know that everyone on this list has tried to assure me that the > percentage of drain is normal, but it just really bothers me that I can > read for an hour and drop almost ten percent. > I just had my bn fully charged on Sunday morning and I am already at 47 > percent on Tuesday. I have probably used the unit for maybe three hours or > so, four hours if I were over exaggerating. > I like everything about this unit except for the battery drain. If it goes > down this fast with a new unit not yet a month old, Imagine what it will be > like in two years. Will it drop 50 percent each day if I read for an hour > or so at that time? > What can I expect in a year and a half or two years with regard to battery > drain? > How will I know it is time to get a new battery? > Is it because I have speech and braille turned on that I drop so fast? Is > it because I am editing, dleting and adding characters instead of just reading? > I assume not because I drop at least four percent a day when my unit is > switched off. > I have a book port, a portable reading device from A P H. Although it > doesn't have an alarm, it does have a clock; so that it keeps track of the > time even when the unit is off. It uses flash memory to store books and > that card is always in the unit. It doesn't drain nearly as fast as the bn > does. I don't keep a flash card in my unit; nor do I use the modem, serial > port or infra-red port. > Of course, we are talking apples and oranges here, but I do remember that > in the early rom updates of the book port, it ate batteries like candy. > They somehow fixed the drain problem and updated the rom so now, it doesn't > drain hardly at all. > > If I over exaggerate, I probably get ten hours out of a full charge. I > thought we were supposed to get between 16 and 20 hours; or is that if the > unit just sits there doing nothing? > I had thought that if we could turn off functions that we weren't > interested in using that, perhaps, we could increase the battery life. > I think this is really going to be a sticking point if the new packmate > gets a much higher battery life. We already have the problem with a newer > internet explorer that pocket pc provides for the pacmate and the fact that > they can use a wireless connection. > I think their 50 hour battery life was an exaggeration, but what if they > can get 20 or 30 hours to our ten? > There is no way to even tell how long you have used the bn between charges > The L key doesn't work on the support page. With my braille lite 18, I > could bring up the status menu and find out how much of a charge I had left > and also how many hours I had been using the unit. > We can't do this with the bn. > If I used the stopwatch each time I switched on the unit to get a running > total, would that drain the battery even faster? > I tried it last night after a suggestion from a user that this wold tell me > how much time I had used the unit. I read for an hour and five > minutes,according to the stopwatch. I dropped from 58 to near 48 percent. > This is the only thing that really frustrates me. > Can you tell<grin>? > Paul Henrichsen > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <home.pacbell.net/paulh52> > > > > ___ > To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit > http://list.pulsedata.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote >
