Hi Paul:
Just remember by having the stop watch going in the background this also
will drain the battery. smile
> ----- Original Message -----
>From: Paul Henrichsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: Braillenote List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:14:49 -0800
>Subject: Re: battery drain. Was [Braillenote] A suggestion regardingalarms
>This is a lengthy message. If you aren't interested in the topic, press
delete.
>Thanks, Richard. I am going to try with speech on and with speech off, once
>for each full charge. I am going to use the stopwatch to measure my time.
>Oh, I will probably be off as much as an hour. I don't know how close I can
>get to a freeze before I have to bail out with the stopwatch or the
>document I am working on, but if I get eight hours and then tack on another
>two just because I am still at two percent, ten hours is not what the
>manual says nor what I was told during the sales pitch.
>And I will tell you all this. If pulse data ever upgrades the motherboard
>with a faster processor, they will sure have to redesign their circuitry
>somehow. Because a faster processor will probably drain the battery even
>more quickly than it drains now.
>Also, once the new pacmate gets established, if they have a longer battery
>life, I think people will lean towards purchasing that unit even if it does
>some things more poorly. IF it doesn't work with the web quite as nicely,
>perhaps requiring a few more keystrokes or if pocket word isn't as friendly
>as our keyword editor, that may be overlooked because they can go wireless
>and they have USB access, can run many third party windows ce programs and
>have a longer battery life. I think their advertisement about a 50 hour
>battery life is totally bogus. If their advertisement that you don't have
>to replace the battery for five years turns out to be as bogus as their
>battery life claims, they might have a problem, but only if it is less than
>ours.
>I was on the pacmate list until a week ago and they were having quite a
>disagreement concerning exactly how much battery life the new pacmate
>really had. The consensus was, as I remember, that you can run it down from
>a full charge in about 12 hours if you put it into some sort of drain mode
>where the amplifier is on all of the time.
>Of course, in normal use, they would get better time as the amplifier, like
>ours, turns off after a specified amount of time.
>I didn't stay on the list; so don't know what the final outcome was, but I
>think that some people were rather disappointed.
>I admit I am making suppositions here, but I was talking to someone who was
>getting a notetaker. He said he was getting a pacmate because he really
>needed wireless at his school. Well, I guess it wouldn't have mattered much
>what I said about how I liked my unit; and make no mistake. I really like
>my braillenote except for the poor battery life. It does what I need to do.
>I have even tried browsing and downloading books from bookshare. I have
>tried the e-mail feature. I read through 187 e-mail messages in ten minutes
>by just listening to their subject lines. It would have taken me over an
>hour to do the same thing in Eudora. The bn was much more responsive as I
>right arrowed from subject to subject.
>So, don't think I don't consider that my bn is absolutely fabulous. I just
>want the battery life that I was told about during the sales pitch.
>Now, I am open-minded enough that if someone from pulse data or someone on
>this list wants to show me that I don't know what I am talking about, I
>invite the discussion.
>I have no reservations about spending over 6000 dollars on my braille note
>and would recommend it to anyone. I even spent the 425 dollars on the 48 mb
>of memory knowing that all you really get is 32 mb. You already have 16 on
>the unit when you buy it. You don't get 48 plus 16 mb. You get only 48 mb.
>But I was agreeable to that and am not sorry I chose to do that. I think
>that in a long run, having that extra memory on board will come in handy. I
>think this will especially be true if third party programs are ever
>written. By the way, I think the pacmate has 64 mb, but I could be wrong
>about how much memory is actually accessible to the user for data.
>The battery life is my only concern. I am even willing to wait for things
>like wireless and USB support as well as a newer Internet explorer so I can
>get access to secure sites as I don't need that right away. I await the
>developer's kit so third parties can develop applications for the braille
>note as well. These are the things that will need to happen to make the bn
>competitive with the pacmate.
>At 1/14/2004, you wrote:
>>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
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>Paul Henrichsen
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]
><home.pacbell.net/paulh52
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