Based on my own testing, battery life is great as long as you turn the device off when it's not in use - regardless of whether it's not in use for a few hours or a few days. If you lock the keyboard, you may get as little as three-four days out of a charge, regardless of how much page-turning you do in that time. I found that leaving the device turned on resulted in about the same battery life as locking the keyboard.
I didn't do extensive testing without the SD card but noticed very little if any difference in battery life with the card in or out. It also happens to be the exact same SD card that worked great with my BeBook, so if there is a problem, it's not with the card.
Regardless of whether the issue is actually with an SD card being present during keyboard lock or with keyboard lock in general, I'm hoping that a firmware update resolves the issue. According to
this thread and
this post on the BeBook forums, BeBook is going to be releasing a firmware update "this week" to "improve the battery's life". Considering that today's Friday and there's no new firmware on the BeBook site, I'd say that "this week" was a little overly optimistic - but, presumably, if BeBook is planning a firmware update is required in order to improve battery life, that means that Astak will soon follow suit.
I don't consider turning the Pocket Pro off between uses to be an acceptable solution, since the darn thing starts back at the main menu every time it's powered on. I hate having to navigate back (sometimes several folders deep, and often several pages deep into the main menu to start with) to my previous location before resuming reading. Recent Files sometimes provides a shortcut if I was in the midst of a specific, stand-alone document but it's useless if I'm reading my way through individual documents within a folder.
I'm not convinced that not having an SD card in the slot while locked would solve the problem but, even if it did, I don't consider reading from internal memory to be an acceptable solution. I keep suitable demo books on the internal memory and keep my own private reading material on SD card - something I'm grateful for now that I'm having to send my peeling Pocket Pro in for replacement, since I won't lose my spot in any of my reading. I can even pop my card back in my BeBook and continue reading while waiting for my replacement Pocket Pro, assuming that I can wrestle the BeBook back out of my mom's hands and persuade her to put up with the Cybook's shortcomings (no folders, annoying buttons, etc.) again for a while...
Or she may happily trade back my BeBook in exchange for the brand spanking new Sony Pocket Edition that I just ordered from Air Miles on Tuesday and which showed up today, much to my shock (fastest 3-4 weeks for delivery that I've ever seen!); she took one look at it and was itching to get her hands on it ("It's so cute!") before I even had a chance to charge it.
