[NTLK] Was: H1000 battery and charger issue, Now: NiMH battery life?

[Forrest Buffenmyer]

It depends on the degree of Newton use; how long and how much (what you are using it for). Also, as expected, backlight use contributes much to battery life.

One of my Newton’s functions is as an alarm: I use Adam Tow’s excellent “Alarm Clock”  as a sort of timer with a snooze function. This helps keep me on task and focused on whatever I am doing. (It also helps keep me awake at times. ;-) .) There is also note taking, email, chess, games of Deep Space Newt, etc., but those uses are more sporadic.

The alarm is set for every 20 minutes; even with frequent use (which includes the backlight coming on), I am usually able to get anywhere from 3-4 days to a week out of a set of AA NiMH batteries. Of course I always have a set of four in the charger, so changeover takes but a few minutes.

I believe the batteries I am using are about a year old, if memory serves me correctly.

YMMV.

Mahalo,
Forrest

Sent from my iPad Pro 9.7"

> On Aug 26, 2018, at 9:52 AM, Gene Beaird <bgbeaird at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 
> Okay, like Mr. Dudney below, I, too had tried the NiCad route many years (decades?) ago, and found them to be almost useless.  With this latest discussion, I went out and purchased some NiMH batteries and a charging station.  Unfortunately, I forgot the Newton takes AA, and picked up two packages of AAA.  No biggie, since we do have some devices around the house that use AAA, I’ll keep the one set I pulled out of the packaging for those, and return the other set for a package of AAs.
> 
> I do have a nagging question, though; how long can I expect these batteries to last on a charge?  I don’t use the Newton much anymore, and ANY amount of time is better than the ZERO seconds we get out of the factory battery pack, but one of the things that turned me off on the NiCad was the short span of time before they had to be thrown into the charger.  Thanks for any input.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Gene Beaird,
> Pearland, Texas
> 
> 
>> On Aug 20, 2018, at 11:00 AM, newtontalk-request at newtontalk.net wrote:
>> 
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2018 15:04:08 -0700
>> From: B Dudney <kosmicdollop at saber.net>
>> To: newtontalk at newtontalk.net
>> Subject: Re: [NTLK] H1000 battery and charger issue
>> Message-ID: <F7E9DA30-6025-4CD9-BE3B-2C4BF6AC1C5D at saber.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain;    charset=utf-8
>> 
>> NMH cells were a huge improvement. Prior to them, I gave up on NiCd?s, ordered a very handy, little Velleman kit voltage converter, attached the biggest heat sink the hobby shop had, and hooked it to a sealed Pb-acid battery. Yeah, the rig was kinda heavy and somewhat bulky, but I was able to ignore recharging: rarely ran out of juice even if unplugged all day long. Plus I didn?t get radiated by 60 cycle.
> 
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