I would think a braille display would drain a lot of power. I can read
for hours with voice. Your battery probably won't last two
years. Neither will mine. A rechargeable battery will discharge, even
with nothing connected to it, I think.
Brenda Mueller
> ----- Original Message -----
>From: Paul Henrichsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: Braillenote List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 15:15:01 -0800
>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
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