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On Sat, 12 Apr 1997, David Ross wrote: > > 1. Re batteries, I've never had anything but rotten luck with NiMH > > batteries in anything I've used them in--two laptops and a cellular > > phone. > > While I can't really disagree with Paul's luck, I know that with the two > batteries in my 701 (one NCad, one NIMH) the NIMH was certainly more > consistent. Others on this list have reported the same. NiMH batteries self-discharge faster than NiCd. The 755 series battery lost about 5% of its charge per day. The 701's NiMH was supposedly designed to avoid this drawback, and apparently it works - I've kept fully charged 701 batteries on the shelf for months with little discharge. > > 2. Re reverse video: battery operating time should be about exactly > > the same. The backlight uses exactly the same amount of power either > > way. > > This is not what my power meter reported. However, rather than argue, I > suggest that anyone interested run the experiment for themselves - easy > enough to do (though easiest with a machine like the 701 which has a > reverse LCD button). Perhaps the power required to keep all those > pixels 'on' on a TFT display is not negligible. It's negligible. The backlight provides all the light. The pixels just determine if they let the light through or not. With the backlight off (i.e. hooked up to an external monitor) I can milk the battery for about 8 hours, as opposed to less than 3 hours normally. OTOH, LCDs are designed to operate on a voltage difference - in an ideal world, they wouldn't draw any current and so would use no power. In reality, they still draw close to nothing. I may be wrong, but I believe the default position of LCD crystals are transparent (untwisted). If that's the case, the brighter colors actually save more power (miniscule though it may be) than the darker colors. For more information than you ever wanted to know about LCDs, see: http://www.ee.washington.edu/eeca/text/LCD.html I don't trust the built-in meter. It seems to key off the voltage it picks up from the battery and run it through some strange formulas based on disk activity, keyboard activity, screen configuration, etc. Battery voltages fluctuate a lot depending on the current being drawn from it (and probaably other factors) so the whole basis for the meter is pretty unreliable. If you really want to measure battery life, turn off all the APM functions and use a stopwatch. > > 3. Re trackpoint caps, I find the cats tongue ones wear out after > > a few tens of hours of moderate use. > > I get months out of mine, and I'm a heavy mouser. However, I never > touch the cap unless I'm actually moving it, and I use a very light > touch. I suspect this may all depend on the range of mouse sensitivities allowed in the OS/programs we're using. I remember OS/2's mouse settings were pretty slow even at the fastest setting, causing me to put a lot of pressure on the cap to move the pointer around at a decent speed. Linux is OK although I'd like it to be a little faster (anyone know how to set that in FVWM?). I could never set Win95's acceleration to a level I liked. It always seemed I was jumping between super-slow to super- accelerated. Right now I have Win95 set for a glidepoint touchpad on an external keyboard I use, and the trackpoint is incredibly slow as a result. I can't figure out a way to set the speed to a different amount depending on whether I'm using the cap or pad. Strange thing is, Linux's mouse speed is just fine with either the cap or pad. -- John H. Kim kim@mak.com