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 >___ >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
