some collective questions of a noob

[Gertjan]

Originally Posted by KingDani

after upgrading to 1.5 , i get the device being powered up automatically everytime i try to put in charge mode via USB cable. any suggestions to prevent that?

No, that's a built in feature. It can't be disabled.

[allovertheglobe]

It's not a big deal though if you have the automatic power-off enabled. Plug it in and that's it, walk away. It will turn itself off after your preset time, presumably speeding up charging (since no power is used for running idle, the only difference this makes anyway)

[KingDani]

thanks man , this forum is really a moral boost.
speaking of preserving battery , does anyone knows which one conserves the battery better 1.the zzz mode or 2.the sleep (complete shut down after a preset time) . i suppose since the zzz somehow does something to the input panels ( both keys and the digitizer ) or else why should you push the screen twice for it to become alive , it is more energy efficient.
and i have one worry : what if , when you're reading very fast , like the page is not really rich in text , you see that after every page turn , you also do another click of digitizer to wake the device up . does it use more energy than no sleep config?
thanks

[Grimulkan]

A fully shutdown device *should not* consume any battery (besides a little needed for the capacitive buttons), although that does not always happen, as you probably know. But it is the best mode to put the device in when not in use (you don't have much of a choice anyway).

The "zzz" mode (I think people call this one the sleep mode actually), in my experience, can last around 10-12 hours untouched. If you are reading really fast (practically "waking up" the device at each page turn), then you probably need to increase the sleep timer. Doing an extra refresh per page turn is probably not energy efficient.

[Shaggy]

The "shutdown after a preset time" will preserve more battery power since the device is (theoretically) turned off. It's faster to recover from the ZZZ mode though, since the shutdown will require a full boot before it's available again.

There's a trade off between battery life versus convenience.

The "shutdown" is (theoretically) just a temporary solution though. Ultimately there will be another mode added that will be able to suspend the device for longer periods of time and draw less power than the current ZZZ mode.

The ZZZ mode is really only designed for relatively short breaks, it's not meant for "set the DR aside for a hour and then start reading again". That's what the other mode will be for, but they haven't finished it yet.

[KingDani]

well , point taken , so firstly, zZz mode is sleep mode , i correct myself. and second , shaggy you have reason to believe they are developing a method to have the device be up and still use less energy than the sleep mode?
and what does the sleep mode actually do? i mean , does it turn of CPU and stuff?

[Shaggy]

There's a lot of mixing of terminology out there, and some confusion. If you're interested in a lot of the details there are threads over on the iRex forum discussing it.

In short though, they are planning on two power saving modes.

1) Suspend-to-RAM is basically a way of quickly putting the device into a power conservation mode with an equally quick recovery. Originally they estimated that this mode would allow the power consumption to slow down enough to last for 24 hours, but most experience shows it's around 10 - 14 hours. They are making tweaks to this mode to try and improve the power savings in a firmware that is currently being tested. No word yet on how much (if any) improvements to the sleep time they have made.

2) Suspend-to-Flash is a way of putting the device into an even "deeper sleep". Basically a snapshot of the current state of the machine is written to flash memory and the entire device is essentially suspended. Recovery from this mode is slower (they've said around 10 seconds), but it will (theoretically) be able to stay in this mode for "weeks". How that turns out in reality is not yet known. Currently they have said that they plan on including this in a future update, but I have not heard any additional information about when that will be.

The terms "sleep", "suspend", etc seem to be used interchangeably for the two modes, depending on who you ask, so it gets a little confusing.

As far as the technical differences, RAM is quicker but you still need to maintain power to the memory in order to keep the data that has been written there. Flash is slower, but it's essentially "permanent", so you can suspend just about everything except the buttons and stylus (so that it'll wake again). Suspend to flash basically turns it into an "always on" device rather than have to shut it down and boot it up every time you want to use it. So if you're reading during the day and pause for 10 minutes, that's a suspend to RAM. If you set it down and want to continue reading with it tomorrow, that's a suspend to flash.

[Shaggy]

Just to clarify, the Suspend-to-RAM mentioned above is the current "zZz" mode.

[KingDani]

thanks , very thorough and very insightful , again i should thank all the Gurus here in mobileread.

by the way , if they manage to do what they planned to , i mean to transform the device from 1 minute boot time , to a 10 second always on device , it would be a revolution to say the least. i mean , they would be able to satisfy me as a costumer that had their target in mind when buying this device.
on a different note , if they try to put forth the RAM thing , this means they designed the hardware in a way capable of doing that , since certain technology is needed to put all the current settings into either NAND Flash or RAM and hibernate the device right?
cheers

[KingDani]

now that i have passed the " oh where is the power button on this thing" and " oh well , it shows PDF files too" phase , i come to realize that it has dictionaries too. however, i have never seen it in action , what should be done. i suspect , there are dic libraries to be added , probably in dic folder. but how does it interact with PDF viewer? i mean , can it highlight a word and then search it there?
cheers

[myprecious]

The easiest way is to purchase a dictionary from mobipocket.com and copy it to the dictionaries folder.
While reading activate the dictionary lookup function and select words with the stylus

[KingDani]

thnx myprecious , but is there any free dictionaries to try too?

[KingDani]

what the hell is this? i have frequently had this problem , especially when i use stylus. it's not a hang , but it prevents other keys to function.
any ideas?

and what's more , i realized that when i use large 200mb PDF files , the system generally slows , not only in the book but in all menus and elsewhere , is it normal?

oh and i also experienced the Stylus freeze , the weird thing is , when that happens , i got one or two unresponsive hardware buttons two , essentially preventing me from navigating in menus.

i wish next firmware upgrade adresses this stylus issue , since without proper annotation , this DR 1000 has no superiority over normal one.

[myprecious]

try the dictionary from this thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25037

[KingDani]

thanks myprecious , and by the way , loved your signature.