VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
- Visor Prism (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=19)
-- Battery Life (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=20343)

Battery Life

I have a Visor Prism, and the battery only lasts about 6 hours. I know it is supposed to do this, but my question is, is there anyway the switch out the batteries with other batteries when they run down? I have the rechargable Prism, and when I am on the road alot, six hours is not enough. Also, if there is no way to switch out the batteries, is there some way to get more power, like an attachment or something that connects to the Prism and gives it more energy? Thanks.

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-Jonathan Jenkins

You sound like a candidate for an Emergency Charger. There's some other options available as well.

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God bless America, my home sweet home...

EnergyDimmer

A better suggestion would be Daniel Siefert's EnergyDimmer software. This will give you tremendous control of your backlight, with different profiles for different commonly used situations... for example, I have made profiles for NightTime, Meetings, and Normal use.

So in meetings I can have it running at 50% brightness and after 20 seconds of inactivity it dims to 10% and after 500 seconds it turns off. This way I can have it running for (so far 8 hours is my record amount of time to be in meetings in a day. I don't recall how much juice it used but I want to say I had 40% left.) My meeting setting is for long run times and keeping it active so I can just start typeing without doing a powerup and password so much, hence the 500 second shut off time. Another advantage to this is that since the screen is powered low but not completely off, it turns on to full brightness instantly instead of warming up over the course of a minute as it does when you turn it on cold. So in WS I just start typing and it automatically turns back on... this is a HUGE feature to me.

The other profiles I made (you can make a ton of them) are used just to have brightness and off times set for darker or brighter normal conditions. Like my night time mode is for games in bed to help turn my brain off so I can sleep.... In this profile: I set the general brightness value low cause the room is dark, and the dimmer time to kick on at 3 minutes, while the off time to be at 3:30.. this way games don't dim out while I'm thinking about my next move, and if it does dim I know i need to hurry up or it will shut off :-)

I have been the main beta tester on this because I had these long meetings where I'd type in WS for hours and got tired of turning it on and off to save the juice. To me this is installed as a must have, I rate it up there with WS for importance to doing my job.

Oh and one more cool thing... it's activated by just pressing and holding the power button (tho there is a problem at the moment where it doesn't work while WS is running, he is looking into this.. it could be just my setup), so it replaces the standard brightness slider with this (tho the brightness slider is still there, and when you use it, it will jump to "custom" profle). It's super easy/intuitive to use and really saves you juice.

If you have any questions or concerns to report on his programs, Daniel is very responsive. I've infact bought his EasyLock software too which has a cool program to load a custom startup graphic, and also has a feature to prevent the app buttons from turning on the prism when it's in my case. Daniels software is cheap and serves many purposes.

back to battery time... be sure to NOT use accelerators cause they burn up your batteries fast (with exception to quickbits which doesn't)

Also (I'm sure you probably know this) that ram cards and other add ons will consume more power if used.

Good Luck

James

Where would I go about getting Daniel Siefert's EnergyDimmer software? I have a very long trip coming up (18+hours) and I won't be able to recharge on the way.

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-Jonathan Jenkins

Energy Dimmer

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God bless America, my home sweet home...

I second the recommendation for Energy Dimmer. Besides being a neat hack, it's added tremendously to my battery life. I run at 40% for 30 seconds then drop down to 10% for another 60 seconds. Now I just have to balance the increased battery life with my "need for speed" using afterburner 3.0

Or, you could check out my charging solutions.
Click on "Charge" in my signature below.

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Rick

www.visorsolutions.com

Battplug

Gadgetguru,

Did you receive my Battplug order through Paypal? I placed the order back on the 23rd and I haven't heard from you - I just want to make sure that you got the message.

Happy holidays,

S Cromer

I got it and it is going out today. I'll send you an e-mail as soon as
I get back from the post office. Got just a little bit behind due to
the holidays and work.

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Rick

www.visorsolutions.com