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Re: DTR1 Battery Life?

galbery@shell02.ozemail.com.au (Gary Albery) wrote:
>Could someone please tell me how long the DTR1 should run for on one full 
>charge? Say with no keyboard attached, the screen turned on and no hard 
>disk use. I only get about an hour and quarter.
>
>Gary
>galbery@ozemail.com.au
>
>
I've had mine since November 94 and have gotten it to last about 5.5 hrs
(but it was in suspend mode most of the time).  It has to be fully
primed, or the battery will suffer from "memory" effect.

To prime the DTR-1 battery, first fully discharge it...so much so that
the system starts arbitrarily rebooting from lack of juice, and then
rebooting in the middle of the boot sequence.

Then shut it down and charge the battery until the blinking green lite
stops.  Then either unplug and plug-back-in (replug?) the power supply,
or cycle the on/off switch on and then off again.  The green lite will
start blinking again, indicating You are charging again.

It will blink for a little less time this time.  Repeat the process
until the charging period only lasts about 5 or 10 minutes.  

At that point, the battery is about as fully charged as it's going to
get.

NOW, 
     Start the DTR-1 and continuously operate it until it runs out of
juice and the warning lite comes on again.  Completely exhaust the 
battery as described above again.  Drain till it spontaneously reboots.

THEN repeat this whole song-and-dance at least TWO (2) more times.

After the third charge, the battery is fully primed (according to the
original Dauphin managements instructions).

With moderate disk use, say using MS Word 2.0 to edit a resume with
frequent saves, You should get about 2.5 to 3.5 hours of continuous
use.  Just playing solitare?  About 3 to 4 hours.

It's because of the NiMH battery.  I recommend using an external Zinc-Air
8-hour battery pack, and would do so myself if I could afford one.
But that does add the inconvenience of another piece (bigger than the
DTR-1) to immobilise You.

I think, soon, somebody will get it right in this pen pc market.
One may yet Hope...

..hope this helps...You can email me (Dave) Vead@q.continuum.net
if you like...................dcm