> Yet the questions still remains. Is there anything that I can do about
>what I am being told is the charge available in the battery? Or, is the
>information I am being given (I am using Avi's backdrop) not accurate on a
>NOS 2.0 MP120? If the information is accurate then I am going to be stuck
>with a unit that will only have a daily battery charge of a few hours?
Any time you change battery characteristics from what the units are
diesigned for, the "charge % remaining will make no sense, since the
discharge curve is different that what the "%" readout was designed for.
I think this stuff is in the FAQ as it used to come up about 4x per week.
That said, with NiMH, either 1000 or 1600's, you wil find that the "%"
drops down to something like 20% then stays there for "ages"- look at the
voltage, it will likely drop to 4.5 or 4.9 then stay there a lot longer
than alkalines. Put it this way- now that I use NiMH, the charge lasts so
long in my MP130 that I don't pay attention to it much anymore.
You can also find many battery-related utils- some log power-on hours so
once you use it once or twice, you know about where you are in time
remaining, others recalibrate the "% left" based on your battery type
(niMH, lithium) and at least one lets you modify the point at which your
Newt will turn off due to low power- which can be dangerous to your card
writes maybe and certainly to your batteries, IMO, if you were unlucky.
Nick's BatMon is one of the "timer" types, I've not tested the only one I
know of that modifies based on lithium, alkaline etc ( Softcharge- but it's
only for NOS2.1 IIRC). See <http://www.logictools.de/newton/english>
(and hah!- I'm going to add his descriptions to ENUF shortly, since I had
to find his page for this reference :)
But don't panic, use it for a bit, you'll get a feel for it regardless of
using 3rd party tools. Monitoring the voltage with Avi's Backdrop is
about as good, and is all I do, myself.
B
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