Power consumption woes

[yvanleterrible]

Hey! Even if the thing was solar like a calculator there would be someone complaining.

BTW I'd like to see a clamshell cover for the Sony with solar cells on the face. Anyone want to rant about this?... joking!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Hey! Even if the thing was solar like a calculator there would be someone complaining.

That would be no use at all in the UK - it's always raining here .

[JSWolf]

That would be awesome to have the Sony Reader be solar as well.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That would be no use at all in the UK - it's always raining here .

Funny Harry! Reminds me of my three years in Germany.

Seriously, most solar chargers can work with ambient light, even indoor lighting. But the best part is you don't even have to think about it, just like calculators.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by jharker

I don't know what it is about the e-reader community- there just seem to be people with insane expectations for performance.

Mostly it's a matter of feeling like the marketing literature was ... excessively optimistic (shall we say?) regarding battery life.

Don't get me wrong, jharker, I agree with you that the Sony's 3~4 weeks of battery life is excellent, much more than sufficient for my needs. And I can see that the iLiad's 10~15 hours is ample for most needs, particularly for a professional environment.

However, I also see that the iLiad's marketing declarations claimed 10,000 page turns or 3 hours of use per day for a month, which it ain't getting.

The Sony is better, with its 7,500 page turns claim, which it probably does get, if you press the "next" button 7,500 times in rapid succession, but it doesn't get that far if it takes you more than 3~4 weeks to read 7,500 pages (that'd be 267 pages a day for 4 weeks).

I agree that the battery life isn't something to complain about on its own, but it's standing in the shadows of the claimed battery life. So folks aren't really fussing about the battery life itself, they're actually fussing about the fact that they aren't getting the battery life they were told they would get.

The fact that what we have actually gotten is sufficient, doesn't make it okay that what we were told was so different from what we've gotten. That's all.

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by dyspepsic

Precisely my complaint. They should have provided the ability to power off the reader. Instead, the "off" switch puts the reader in "standby" mode. 7000 page turns is a theoretical maximum which ignores the power draw of the OS and is probably not possible under normal use. It is misleading to advertise 7000 page turns.

The OS is really slow to boot and I assume this is due to the deliberate choice of a slow processor to limit power consumption. So it seems power consumption was a design consideration. It's too bad there is no way, short of pulling the battery, to stop power drain when the reader is not in use. So much for 7000 page turns when I'm away from a wall socket

--dyspepsic

It's completely possible under normal use. I've hit more than 7000 page turns a couple of times now. During the week I took off after the holidays, and more recently during a long weekend in which I read the entire Honor Harrington series from start to finish (again).
Things I've found which increase battery life:
a) Don't use PDF or RTF. LRF books appear to consume a lot less power to render.
b) Only use the internal fonts.
c) Don't leave a SD card in the reader, and don't read books off the SD card. This significantly cut my battery life (by almost half) when I tried it, as well as being slower to react, and not allowing me to use my collections. (I read a lot of series, collections are a must)
d) Just because it can play MP3s, doesn't mean it should.

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by jpchan

Also don't forget to view the Torchwood series also from BBC. And to keep this post a bit on topic if not to the thread then to the forum any doctor who ebooks out there?

I have a few which I reformatted from the BBC. I stripped out all the commentary and just kept the actual story. I can post them in the ebooks forum I suppose.

[JSWolf]

I've tried playing mp3 and decided it doesn't reallyt sound that good. My Rio Karma sounds better. So if I want to listen to music or whatnot, I'll use that.

Jon

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by bkilian

I can post them in the ebooks forum I suppose.

I'm ... not sure that would be a good idea. I know they're giving them away, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they want them posted elsewhere ....

Does it say anything about distributing them on the download page? It may give permission, but if it doesn't specifically do so, I wouldn't post them.

[dyspepsic]

Originally Posted by NatCh

You could do a Soft Reset, that shuts it off completely. Of course it also generally wipes any bookmarks, page history, etc. since the last connection to the ConnSoft.

I guess if you knew you weren't going to use it for a while, you could connect it to the ConnSoft, to fix your bookmarks and such, then soft reset it. Incidentally, I think this is more or less what Sony does with them when they box them up originally, I expect that's why the batteries come out of the box with a charge still on them.

Anybody want to volunteer to try it? I'm far too dependent on mine to put it aside for any length of time.

This is a good idea. I'll give it a try.
thanks.

[NatCh]

Cool, do please let us know what you find out.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by bkilian

I have a few which I reformatted from the BBC. I stripped out all the commentary and just kept the actual story. I can post them in the ebooks forum I suppose.

Please don't do this unless the BBC explicitly say that it's OK to do so. The fact that these books are downloadable from one specific web site does not mean that they are freely postable elsewhere. They are certainly still under copyright protection, and you need the permission of the copyright holder to post them elsewhere.

Thanks!

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I'm ... not sure that would be a good idea. I know they're giving them away, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they want them posted elsewhere ....

Does it say anything about distributing them on the download page? It may give permission, but if it doesn't specifically do so, I wouldn't post them.

I got them from Manybooks.net, but they don't seem to have any licenses in them, which is why I hadn't yet uploaded them anywhere

I also have most of the Baen books, a fair percentage of which can be grabbed for free from ebooks.thefifthimperium.com. (I paid for most of mine, because I really want to encourage them ). I recommend the Honorverse CD (The At all costs one is a winner if you like David Weber at all)

[NatCh]

If they came from Manybooks, then they're probably okay -- they follow the same guidelines as Project Gutenberg.