PocketMatrix

Hey . . . I just got a new sleeve for my iPaq (The expansion pack plus for PCMCIA slots) and was curious if there was a way I could dependably tax the CPU to 100% and test battery life with and without the added battery power?

In addition to this, is there any meter out there that shows your current CPU utilization, etc?

Building upon that . . . I thought the additional battery pack shared power with the main power? Is this not true? For example, say I had the extra battery pack in there but the hard drive was removed. Would this power contribute to my battery life or no?

It seems (or so the warnings are telling me, I'm reaching low external power) that the expansion will shut off when the additional battery pack dies. Is this true? Why do they not share power?

Could someone explain the relationship between these two to me?

That turning off when the external is low is a "feature" in the new plus packs. Even on the CF+, it does it stupidly. Can't Compaq release just ONE flaw free product?

well shit . . . so they don't share power at all? how does this work?

I'm finding the battery life of the expansion pack plus alone is rather dismal. Perhaps I'm doing too much song swapping, but I expected it to be better.

Is there any way to override that feature?

I'm unsure, but the CF+ will also die if the battery runs dead, and the original CF didn't even have a battery, and the CF+ dies when the battery is dead. I think it would require something with the firmware on the PC Card sleeve, or the OS.

Thats a real shame, because battery life really does suck . . . a lot.

Beh.

Turning off the backlight and underclocking when needed should go a long way. Dunno how good underclocking does, but the backlight does a lot to my battery life. If you can, return the PC+ sleeve, and try and get the original PC sleeve, I don't think this has the same problem (Correct me if I'm wrong folks)

Essentially, the external battery packs in the sleeves only really act to "charge" the internal battery. The power is shared when they're plugged in, and yes, if you plug your iPAQ into the sleeve sans hard-drive it should last longer... but if your main battery is low then your iPAQ will gripe at you and shut itself down.

How long is your battery lasting? My dual PCMCIA sleeve with a CF card in it full of MP3s lasts ages. The PCMCIA hard-drives really suck power.

My iPAQ tends to die most with the internal battery flat and the PCMCIA sleeve full ('cos I use it a lot without the sleeve). If I plug the iPAQ into the sleeve after it's died it turns straight off. If I leave it 10 mins plugged into the sleeve and then use it in the sleeve it works ok (albeit with low charge warnings occasionally). This may all of course be voodoo.

Cheers,

Refractor

Almost forgot.

If you know how to program, write a program that loads and stores >8KB randomly to thrash the memory and cranks the back-light to full while it's doing it. That should stress the poor little iPAQ.

Then, let's just hope fragementation isn't as much of a problem on PocketPCs :P