hi
i ve been using the reader for over a month now and the No1 thing that bugs me is battery life....am i the only one that thinks that the battery is good for A LOT less page turns???....reading 3,4 books,400 page each, seems to drain the battery..that means about 1500 page turns.....say 2000 at most...the 7.500 page turns adverr\tized seem to be at least 3 times more than what it really can do....does antone else have the same idea???

Just sent my 500 in for servicing (again) because of the battery.
It drains, just sitting on the shelf, unused, in less that a week. It should last nearer 3 weeks. That comes to about 5% depletion, per day, with no page turns. Assuming (similar to ipod battery life) that the 7500 pages were established as a near theoretical max, by turning 7500 pages in a row, over perhaps a 4 or 5 hour period, so the 5% depletion per day doesn't factor in, then estimate 1% depletion per 75 pages. So, 2000 pages would account for near
27% of your battery life. The other 73% would take around 14
days (at the 5% depletion rate). So, If it took you near 2 weeks
to read the 2000 pages, then you'd be doing quite well. If it took
less than a week, then there may be a problem.
BTW, the first time I sent the unit in, when it came back, the battery life was actually worse. I called up the CSR, and he told me he had access to one of the engineers who helped develop the device, so ... after leaving me on hold for 20 minutes, he came back and said 6 days was within spec. I just lived with it until recently, when I picked up a 505. Thought I'd sell the 500 on ebay, or give it to my mother. Figured I needed to be certain about the battery, so, went back thru these forums and did some more reading. A lot more data had accumulated over the past year, and it seemed clear that the CSR was either mislead, or lied to me. I called sony up again, and this time was told that there was clearly something wrong, since I should get nearer 3 weeks.
They admitted that the CSR had been wrong, but they had no documentation of specifically what he had told me, so they would not repair the unit for free, since I had recently gone past the 1 year warranty. However, they did knock 50% off, so if this $50 gets the unit back up to original battery expectation, I'll be happy.
- Mike

Are you playing music through it, or leaving a memory card in it? That drains it. Ive started taking my card out.

i havent even tried playing music on it, never really saw the point in it anyway....i only bought it for reading.....since i posted the comment i have looked around this site to see what other people say about it......thing is..the more i read..the more confused i get......it seems like every reader has a different battery in it with different capabilities!......the problem for me is what it drains by just standing on the shelf......i do have 2 different cards in it, one sd and a sony one, but could that be causing so much power consumption??....i'll try without them and see what happens.....

The Reader is never really "off" - rather it just enters a slightly lower power state and blanks the screen when you slide the power switch. So, the processor is still running (probably busy keeping its real time clock updated...don't get me started) and it will eventually run the battery flat. Most people are seeing about three weeks of "off" time to drain it.

If you need to shut it completely off there are some hacks to do this. It will last for months when shut down, but takes a couple of minutes to power back up, and I think it can goof-up your bookmarks in some manner.

Regards,
Bob

In my opinion it's hard to compare, because battery life depends on many factors:


Using standby mode or switching the device completely off after usage (shutdown)
Using flash memory devices or not. And to make it even worse: each of them has different power consumption
Reading Books in different formats. Some are easy to display, some need a lot of processor power
How fast pages are read. Using large fonts gives you short times to read a page, small fonts mean more time for each page. And everybody has a different reading speed.


So everyone has different kinds of usage, so it's really hard to compare.

Stefan

Like Stepanok, I'm seeing the same thing. I have both the 500 and the 505. The 505 would be depleted in half the time I had for the 500, reading around the same speed. Recently I was overseas and my wife uses the 500 while I used the 505. We were reading about the same amount of time (and I don't thing I turn pages faster than her). She did not need to charge the whole of 2 weeks. I had to charge it 2 times!

I've found that if I actually turn off the power to my 505 at night and don't turn it back on till I actually plan on using my 505, the battery lasts a lot longer. How much a lot is depends on your usage.

Are you recharging the battery fully - till the red light goes off?

It's tempting to disconnect the unit as soon as it reaches 4 bars. But this is a snare and a delusion, and will only cause the battery meter to calibrate incorrectly.

Hmmmm I get much better battery life than that, perhaps you have a bum battery