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

[Gene Beaird]

Jason, Forrest, thank you for the quick reply.  It’s been probably a decade at least, since I’ve used NiCad, so I have no clue how long they lasted, but remember I was swapping them out with great frequency, and it seemed, even more often than regular batteries.

I seem to remember 3-5 day charge time with the batter pack, but back then, I was using the Newton much more often.  When I was at my desk, though, I had the thing plugged in most of the time.  I don’t use them much anymore.  In fact, they usually sit on our bar, one plugged in, and the other running on a set of regular batteries.  I did get a NOS battery pack several years ago, but, I guess because of it’s ultimate age, it didn’t give me much more than about 3 hours time between charges.  Hoping to get at least a week with rechargeables with the Newtons sitting mostly idle.  We’ll see. 

That helps.  Thanks.

Regards,

Gene Beaird,
Pearland, Texas


> On Aug 26, 2018, at 2:25 PM, newtontalk-request at newtontalk.net wrote:
> 
> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2018 11:58:39 -0700
> From: Forrest Buffenmyer <newton_phoenix at mindspring.com>
> To: newtontalk at newtontalk.net
> Subject: Re: [NTLK] Was: H1000 battery and charger issue,	Now: NiMH
> 	battery life?
> Message-ID: <40BFD75F-84B1-4CE5-BCBB-C4AD9D5691F4 at mindspring.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8
> 
> 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