First look at DR800SG (video review)

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Mr. Goodbar

I personally used Book Designer for quite awhile, but Calibre blows it away at this point. Really a top notch program with tons of features and more being added regularly.

I may have to look into it. I've been using Book Designer for years (mostly to convert to PDF and resize for the 8" screen, along with some editing), never tried Calibre.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Mr. Goodbar

Plugged mine in to top it off yesterday and this time it did got to 100%, although like we already mentioned the light never turned green.

I went away on Wednesday morning and came back Friday evening. The battery meter had gone from 82% to 68% - what was it doing to use 15% of its juice in two and a half days?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by TGS

I went away on Wednesday morning and came back Friday evening. The battery meter had gone from 82% to 68% - what was it doing to use 15% of its juice in two and a half days?

It's in sleep mode, not turned off. It would last longer when not in use if it had a real "off" mode, but that's what the iLiad/DR1000 have and people complain about the boot time.

15% in 2 1/2 half days is pretty good for these devices. That's a "stand-by" time of over two weeks at that rate, which is pretty much on par with most other devices of this type and WAY better than previous iRex devices.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

It's in sleep mode, not turned off. It would last longer when not in use if it had a real "off" mode, but that's what the iLiad/DR1000 have and people complain about the boot time.

15% in 2 1/2 half days is pretty good for these devices. That's a "stand-by" time of over two weeks at that rate, which is pretty much on par with most other devices of this type and WAY better than previous iRex devices.

I wasn't really complaining - mostly because I've got nothing to compare it with since it's my first ereader. And it was a kind of genuine question - what - other than keeping the clock going - is it doing when it isn't doing anything such that it would presumably go from full to empty in a couple of weeks. Or, to put it another way, what's the difference, from the DR800's point of view, between being asleep - which it can be - and being off - which it can't.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by TGS

I wasn't really complaining - mostly because I've got nothing to compare it with since it's my first ereader. And it was a kind of genuine question - what - other than keeping the clock going - is it doing when it isn't doing anything such that it would presumably go from full to empty in a couple of weeks. Or, to put it another way, what's the difference, from the DR800's point of view, between being asleep - which it can be - and being off - which it can't.

Sorry, didn't mean to get jumpy. The topic of iRex battery life has a long and colorful history, it's been a big issue with them until now. It was a knee jerk "here we go again" reaction on my part, sorry about that.

It probably keeps the CPU going in order to respond to buttons (although throttled way down) as well as keeping power to the memory in order to maintain the state of the OS and open books, etc. The primary advantage is the recovery time, along with other benefits like resuming where you left off, etc.

Technically it can go "off", but it only does so when the battery gets low in order to prevent it from being fully drained. Under normal conditions when you flip the power switch it's going to be in sleep. If it takes it a couple seconds to start back up, then you know it was in sleep mode. If it does a complete bootup (40 - 50 seconds), including the opening logo, then it was really off.

It would be nice if the user had the option to tell it to shutdown instead of go to sleep for when you know you're not going to be using it for a long time, and accept the trade off of a much slower startup time. There isn't any way to do that currently, at least not that I know of, other than letting it sit long enough where the battery gets to the point that it automatically shuts itself down. Still, I think most people would much rather have it this way, than the previous way where you had to do a shutdown/startup every time you wanted to use the device. At least, that's been the overwhelming feedback in the past.

[Mr. Goodbar]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I may have to look into it. I've been using Book Designer for years (mostly to convert to PDF and resize for the 8" screen, along with some editing), never tried Calibre.

I used if for my iLiad and my Sony 505, but when I started using a Kindle I switched to Calibre since it's mobi support was much better. Calibre has come a long way in the past year or so and it's pretty much set and forget in it's conversions. I load a book, modify meta data and click convert. In 99% of the cases I get a very nicely formatted book in a few seconds. The only time I've had issues with it is when I've had some really bad source files and I think in the past year that's only been two times.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Sorry, didn't mean to get jumpy. The topic of iRex battery life has a long and colorful history, it's been a big issue with them until now. It was a knee jerk "here we go again" reaction on my part, sorry about that.

No problem - in the short time that I have been using MobileRead you do seem to have been the consistent champion and staunch defender of iRex - it must get tiresome sometimes!

Originally Posted by Shaggy

It probably keeps the CPU going in order to respond to buttons (although throttled way down) as well as keeping power to the memory in order to maintain the state of the OS and open books, etc. The primary advantage is the recovery time, along with other benefits like resuming where you left off, etc.

Technically it can go "off", but it only does so when the battery gets low in order to prevent it from being fully drained. Under normal conditions when you flip the power switch it's going to be in sleep. If it takes it a couple seconds to start back up, then you know it was in sleep mode. If it does a complete bootup (40 - 50 seconds), including the opening logo, then it was really off.

Thanks - that's the sort of explanation I can understand.

Originally Posted by Shaggy

It would be nice if the user had the option to tell it to shutdown instead of go to sleep for when you know you're not going to be using it for a long time, and accept the trade off of a much slower startup time. There isn't any way to do that currently, at least not that I know of, other than letting it sit long enough where the battery gets to the point that it automatically shuts itself down. Still, I think most people would much rather have it this way, than the previous way where you had to do a shutdown/startup every time you wanted to use the device. At least, that's been the overwhelming feedback in the past.

It would be nice to have the option I guess, but now I understand from your explanation that the battery drain is not just crap power management, but that the power is being used to enhance my experience with the unit I think the trade off is worth it.