[allovertheglobe]

So you got about 5 1/2 hours, as I had posted from my own experience in the other thread. Seems to be the ballpark figure then.

As I also mentioned, as well as iRex did on their forum's FAQ, power management is not really implemented yet. That means that the reader itself (CPU and all) runs at full power for those 5 1/2 hours REGARDLESS OF YOUR USAGE. The screen technology alone plays very little into that.

No surprise there. You are buying a product that is the bleeding edge of ebook technology, from a fairly small company (compared to Sony for instance) that has a long history of struggling to meet their user's expectation (see the whole Iliad forum) But they also DID work on their code and improved things after a while.

I realistically hope for a USAGE time extension (via CPU underclocking etc.) to about 8 hours so it gets me through a normal working day. Once the advance power management is implemented, it will be possible to quickly turn it "on" and "off" while greatly extending the battery life i.e. "days".

(As happens with Sony reader when you use the sliding button at the top. This reader also, when completely shut down via a special menu, takes quite a while to start up. And I had some battery indicator issues with it as well, noticeably shorter than Sony claimed, and their own firmware update improved things too.)

But it's probably going to be a while before they release the firmware with these improvements (and many more) It's a work in progress and will require some patience on our part. Or a request for a refund. I'm not making excuses for iRex, their biggest blunder is once again making big promises that they will be hard pressed to live up to (aka marketing) and rushing a product to market before it has matured sufficiently.

I made this purchase knowing the above full well, and the trade-off is worth it to me. I'm honestly sorry if you got into this unaware of any of this.

As far as FlyingTablet's comment goes:
Those comparisons are not realistic. No cellphone can display full PDF files in a useable manner. Cellphone tech has a billion-dollar industry behind it with legions of engineers that have been squeezing out every bit of battery life for years. Recently a Newsweek editorial complained about how it's not possible to get through a day using the fancy iPhone without recharging, a common problem with the new generation of powerful PDA/phones.

Also, as a longtime Linux user, I'm very familiar with the longtime struggle to get APM to work properly on most laptops. Open Source is not a magic solution (esp. if the hardware makers aren't supportive) Speaking of laptops, which ones get 5 1/2 hours of usage? Especially without a big "Extended" battery... my EEE PC certainly doesn't (and the screen is tiny)

I have yet to see a true Hanlin V9 (the big one) early adopters review like ours here, so claims of their better battery life are at this point every bit as much hype as iRex's, assuming it will even offer the same level of actual performance. Plastic Logic is another bit of pure speculation at this point. (I'm really looking forward to our forum members getting their hands on all this cool new technology!)