Microdrive life

[???]

Hey, I have a question for Chris and Moosemaster, and anyone else that has a 1 gig microdrive. Currently, I'm considering buying an atek adapter for my Jornada 568 along with a 1 gig microdrive. THe only thing that worries me is the battery life and performance. How fast is the microdrive? and usually, how many hours can you get with it, with continuous use? I'd appreciate any feedback or answers I could get. Thanks.

[NYIllustrator]

it KILLS your batt.

[James S]

Its sustained data transfer rate is faster than Compact flash, so it will play videos faster, but in game loading of sounds and graphics will create a pause in the middle of the action.
The battery life ... isn't the greatest, but the storage really makes up for it. I can just barely last a day of school with my MicroDrive, using it about 20 minutes in my five 52 minute class periods and 60 minutes in my one 90 minute class period. If you can afford two 512MB CF cards, or the new 1GB CF card then that would work much better and I'd go for that.
The storage is great, I have over 170 songs, 4 full length movies, 75 novels, and 30 PPC applications all on it, my PPC's main memory is completely free. But don't expect to use it all day long constantly on.

[NYIllustrator]

I just ordered a 5 gig pc card, cause my 512mb CF is already filled. I don't understand though why if data transfer is faster than cf, why it would play video fast but games slow? Also the 1 gig CF cards are great but no way Im paying $900 for one.

[Jaybot]

I don't know where Moose got thoe numbers, the data transfer rate is much slower than CF.

And it doesnt kill your batt much more than just using a normal CF card. Especially if you're just using it for storage most of the time.

If you're movies off of it it will kill your bat life, and if youre playing mp3s (using wmp) the battery will be dead in about an hour (it doesnt cache at ALL)

playing games off of it, youre better off cutting and pasting to main mem when you wanna play the game, waiting for every new sprite or sound effect load is a pain in the ass. once its cached though, you never get any skip. still, i'd rather play from the main mem, or a CF

[NYIllustrator]

Is this the same for a PC card HD?

[Matt Keys]

I would assume it is.

[ottoman]

[James S]

[nicodemus]

[sandmannn]

Say I want to maybe watch movies, play mp3's, and play games and run apps from a storage card. It's all kind of confusing to me. I have a Jornada 568, does an MD work with that? What's this about an extension? Which would be faster, and more effective for my uses, in my machine, a CF or an MD? If anyone could provide a simplified answer, it would be greatly appreciated. Also a very important issue: battery life, what's the best option?

And about how much can you get a full length movie down to, still easily viewable on the pocket pc screen?

Thanks for all the help.

[Courtney White]

Actually, i tested out my battery life on my 720.

If i turned off the LCD, the Battery life is really good. the LCD uses more battery power then the HD.

This doesn't work for games, of course, but i use it to play my MP3's, which i have alot of.

Really, the pause is very slight, and usually one when you first open a game.

what i really like, is that you can take out the PCMCIA HD, and Defrag it on a Laptop.

[T¹]

CF cards use flash memory which use less power, but are more expensive per meg. Microdrives, being actual hard disks, drain much more power due to their use of moving parts.

Due to the fact that MDs are minature hard drives, they are only available in the larger CF type II format, which isn't supported on the 568 out-of-the-box. Therefore a convertor from type I->type II has to be used. But, although the 568 battery is quite good for a PPC, i would still recommend using a large CF card especially for MP3, video, etc playback purposes.

[Courtney White]

A Palm Pilot also uses much less power than a PPC,

HMMM????

[sandmannn]

One of you said the 512mb CF card was $200, well, can you provide me a link to such a deal from a RESPECTED dealer? I looked on buy.com (I've had very good experiences with them) and the cheapest I found was around $320.

And such a product would be something along the lines of, I pull it out of the box, put it in my PPC, maybe install some software, the put stuff onto it, just like that, or is there more to it? Also I want it to be fast, no lag time after the first load or whatever! If I'm gonna spend $200 I want it to be just what I want.