Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Jersey City, NJ
Posts: 170

My batteries used to last me about a week with normal use, including about an hour or so a day continuous e-book/AvantGo reading. Now suddenly, my batteries are depleting after only a couple of days. And I haven't even been using it for reading lately. I checked, and my beam receive option is set to 'off' -- so does anyone have any idea what else might be causing this strange sudden battery drain? Could it be some circuitry malfunction?

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1883

Do you keep your visor in the cradle a lot? that seems to drain the battery too....
And ofcourse hotsyncing drains too...

__________________
<IMG WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="50" SRC=http://www.visorcentral.com/images/visorcentral.gif> VisorCentral Discussion Moderator
Do files get embarrassed when they get unzipped?

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 170

Have you tried a soft reset? You may have inadvertently entered a PalmOs debug mode which uses battery power even with the device off. A soft reset will remove it from that mode.

Registered: Feb 2000
Location: SW Virginia
Posts: 290

quote:

---

Originally posted by ToolkiT
Do you keep your visor in the cradle a lot? that seems to drain the battery too....
And ofcourse hotsyncing drains too...

---

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Jersey City, NJ
Posts: 170

Hotsync: Power Hog

Perhaps hotsyncing is the culprit. I HAVE added a ton of channels to my AvantGo download list lately. Who would've thought it would make THAT much difference though! I guess I'll go back and edit out some of the channels. I'll try the soft reset too, though, just in case. Thanks!

Registered: Feb 2000
Location: SW Virginia
Posts: 290

Instead of removing channels, you could instead reduce their update frequency. For my channels most are set to update only once a day, some every four hours, and only a few every time. With this setup, the first time I sync for a given day, the dialog says something about updating 400 some pages. For later syncs that day it says between 4 and 30. Let's see, I have not synced yet today ...

• First sync, it says removing 216 out of date pages and then updating 435 pages. Total sync time, about 5 minutes.
• Second sync: 11 removals, 28 updates, about 1 minute.
• Third sync: 11 removals, 10 updates, about 1 minute.

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Jersey City, NJ
Posts: 170

Sync Frequency

Thanks, but I only sync once a day as it is -- just so I can get the day's news. If it weren't for AvantGo, I probably wouldn't even bother sync-ing more than once every couple of days...

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1883

quote:

---

Originally posted by potter

quote:

---

Originally posted by ToolkiT
Do you keep your visor in the cradle a lot? that seems to drain the battery too....
And ofcourse hotsyncing drains too...

---

According to an old news item by James, the cradle drain problem does not exist in the Visors. (One advantage of not having the extra serial port control lines.) In a nutshell, if the visor is turned off, there is no extra power drain for sitting in the cradle.

Now HotSync'ng is a big power drain.

[Edited by potter on 10-18-2000 at 09:09 AM]

---

I stand corrected...
<hides away in the nearest corner >

__________________
<IMG WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="50" SRC=http://www.visorcentral.com/images/visorcentral.gif> VisorCentral Discussion Moderator
Do files get embarrassed when they get unzipped?

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

quote:

---

Originally posted by leojbramble
Now suddenly, my batteries are depleting after only a couple of days.

---

__________________

God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Jersey City, NJ
Posts: 170

I thought the rapid depletion might have just been caused by a bad batch of batteries until it occurred with two completely different brands, one of which was Duracell, which I've been using on a fairly regular basis.

And no, I've never had the memory patch issue. Thanks for the suggestions, though...