Battery Life... really?

[Lordvic]

Originally Posted by jackastor

Could it be that the wifi is still on? Although I notice that it appears to be off as there are no bars indicating connection. That said even if the wifi was not connected but still on it would be a drain to the battery. its just an educated guess but i do know wifi activly drains power, not sure what the power consumption would be in idle mode, food for thought at any rate.

Check this as well

I turn my wifi off. I don't use the store and I dont have any subscriptions. But i noticed on teh train the other day, when i pulled up the menu the wifi indicator in the bottom left showed "no connection" and not off.

Went to the settings and sure enough. it was on again. I KNOW i turned it off. I think for some reason, whenever i power down, then back up, it's attempting to use the Wifi antenna

[taming]

Make sure you don't have it set to check for subscriptions--even though you don't have any.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by smoggy

Supposedly when the blue light comes on in the upper right corner, the battery is charged. IT stilltakes the 3 hopurs to charge, but 1 1/2 days - 135 pages - that's it.

If I know I'm going to be away from the book for a while, I'll power it off.
If I'm going to the bath or shoping or soewhere where there is a lineup,
or A&W for lunch, The book is there. being read. I can devour books.


I read the whole Lee Child - Jack Reacher series on my word processor
in 4 days. I read fast & retain what I read. When I was ready to stop,
I would delete what I had read, and save as a temp file.

I found a North American Source for the battery.
It is 11.00 & change, but the shipping costs are
prohibitive at this point.

http://www.robotshop.com/ca/ProductS...RB%2DSpa%2D109

There is a branch in the US also & one in Europe.
Problem is, they are on the wrong side of Canada.
I'm on Vancouver Island.

I think for the time being, I'm going to just do the
4 AA batteries wired to the USB cable. That will
increase the duration. At leat until Kobo gets off
their butt.

robot shop is not a good company to purchase from. They offer no support and if you push for an RMA you may end up being black listed because they had to do the right thing instead of dick you around.

I cant remember but I did buy a battery for a cam corder and the guy i bought it off his company was around vancouver... ha i found the name of the company its to Vidtek BatteryCanada good luck I think this guy is better to deal with and he might be closer? good luck
jack

[zoran]

Originally Posted by smoggy

My computers are working 24/7/365. I don't like "sleep Mode" on my computers
they're there to work, and unlike me, don't need coffee breaks.
I reboot once a week.

I found it funny to answer things I agreed in fact.
When managing device, one needs to know what the purpose is
and what amount of money he/she wants to spend. Public servers
are, as you said, 24/7/365. Home node should not be always on,
since it would break sooner or later. Even routers are not necessary
up if you don't need them for some time.
Ebook reader is not a computer for mundane work. It reads ebooks.
To save battery, you have to help it. Turn wifi off. Power it down if
not reading. Be gentle to it and it will last longer.

I haven't gone for the wall charger yet, again, all those accessories
shouldn't be necessary if this thing would perform any where near specs.

I got wall charger and saw no reason to use usb adapters at all. It is
secure regarding voltage and amperage etc. Not that sure for computer
ports.

I really do like the Kobo, but I'm beginning to think the only viable solution is to find my receipt and return this thing to Kmart.

I write this just because there should be enough positive answers for people to decide. Regarding your post, reader is a bust. I have the first
version and adore it for reading. I spent my time to find the best way for
usage. The last quote doesn't bother me, but sounds wrong, wrong, wrong.
Best regards.

Originally Posted by smoggy

I found another usb cord and am trying it again with a different port.
I'm going to bed, and we'll see in the morning how it goes.

My suggestion would be to try another machine--one at work, your parent's, children's, the guy across the hall, any other one. That way you can identify whether it is the reader or how it interacts with your machine.

[coinín]

Originally Posted by jackastor

robot shop is not a good company to purchase from. They offer no support and if you push for an RMA you may end up being black listed because they had to do the right thing instead of dick you around.

We've ordered from robotshop and had no trouble at all. I wonder if we're just lucky. I sure hope so, because my nabaztag needs a little brother.

[cfrock]

So can anyone comment on avg battery life over 1 full charge to full discharge?

[ltr]

With the WiFi model, I get about 40 days on a charge, using Power on/off each use, reading about 2 hours a day, WiFi and Newspapers disabled.
Using Sleep rather than Power On/Off, I get about 11 days.

[cfrock]

Originally Posted by ltr

With the WiFi model, I get about 40 days on a charge, using Power on/off each use, reading about 2 hours a day, WiFi and Newspapers disabled.
Using Sleep rather than Power On/Off, I get about 11 days.

Thx. Exactly what I was looking for.

[Namekuseijin]

The Kobo (touch specially) seems like such an awesome dedicated e-reading device that I find it a shame that it comes with such bad battery. How can the thing eat so much battery when the E Ink display eats nothing without page changes and the (very limited) dedicated processing unit is mostly idle (it doesn't even feature mp3 playback or something)?

I was considering buying the new Kobo Touch, but the battery issue and Border's financial situation doesn't inspire me much. I wanted it so much because it seems to be the one dedicated e-reader with Pearl E Ink with good support for ePubs and PDFs.

[taming]

Originally Posted by Namekuseijin

I was considering buying the new Kobo Touch, but the battery issue and Border's financial situation doesn't inspire me much.

Huh? The battery on the Touch--and indeed on the WiFi reader-- seems just fine to me. Battery problems haven't been an issue for a long, long time. You did read the report about 40 days reading 1-2 hours a day above, right.

And Borders, well, it's not like the fate of Kobo and Borders are linked.

[Lordvic]

after my last post in here, I decided to see just how much battery i could get (the 5ish days was long enough to begin with for me).

I charged it the night of the 17th. And have been fully turning it off insteado f just leaving it to sleep.

my battery bar is still 100% now 6 days later.

the battery on these units looks fine to me!

as for those worried about the kobo + borders and borders not doing well. Kobo is a Canadian run company and independant from border's. What they have is just a deal with eachother that Border's is the exclusive store on the Kobo reader in the united states edition of the Kobo reader.
In Canada, I believe it's Chapters / Indigo that has that deal. But the ereader, since it uses standard open formats such as Epub and ADobe's ereader tech do not require you to use their exclusive stores (such as kindle requiring amazon). you can buy ebooks from any source that supplies them in these two formats and read them just as fine on your ereader.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by coinín

We've ordered from robotshop and had no trouble at all. I wonder if we're just lucky. I sure hope so, because my nabaztag needs a little brother.

I hope so, and i hoipe you continue to have no problems. But they are still not an honest company.

regards

jack

[FJames]

So my battery charge just ran out for the 2nd time since purchase. It showed about 20% when I started reading, and the unit shut down about 15 minutes later. This time it was fully charged to start with, and I turned it off completely when not in use. It lasted about 12 days, but I would estimate only about 1000 page turns. I did use Wifi for a few minutes here and there doing tests, and left the WiFi on accidentally once while reading for about 45 minutes.

So I would say based on what I've seen so far that the battery life is adequate, but far less than claimed.

[moffattm]

Many battery-powered devices (i.e. cell phones, laptops, etc) require a calibration period before they start performing well. Note that this has nothing to do with a "memory effect" that old nickel cadmium batteries used to get. Calibration is needed to enable the device to properly gauge battery usage.

You can read all about it at http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ry_calibration

Many manufacturers recommend battery calibration on their devices, for example:

HP
Apple
Nook

When I first received my Android phone I was a bit disappointed at the battery life and when I started looking at the forums I found many other people threatening to return their phones because they weren't getting the battery life they expected. Turns out that everyone had only had their phones a few days and only done a few battery charges and therefore they hadn't calibrated the batteries properly. After doing a proper calibration the phones were much better and everyone calmed down.

So the basic message is that just because you've charged your device a couple of times and not received the expected amount of use, don't immediately blame the battery. Persevere a bit and do a couple of proper calibration's and you should find your battery life improving.