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
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