Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

If you edit mce.ini (/etc/mce); you can disable the camera unlock.

Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

I was kinda wondering about this very issue. I tend to toss the PlayThing into my bag, turned off, for the day (where it invariably slips out of the soft-felt pouch. I can't *wait* for my Proporta case to get here).

Then I end up turning it on as needed. This means lunch time at the local free wi-fi coffeeshop downstairs so I can check my emails and listen to the radio.

Then off it goes again until I get home. Later in the evening, I'll fire PlayThing up and listen to some more radio (or futz with the background image and themes). Then turn it off again for the night.

The battery indicator hardly ever says 'battery full', though. And that's kinda worrying me since PlayThing's definitely off for a good 8 hours at night and has been plugged into the charger once I get home and start listening to the radio until the next morning.

I take it that charging the battery can't be done while it's in use?

And even if it doesn't charge while in use, is 8 hours the norm for charging the battery?

Now, I'm all for just leaving it in stand-by... but that charge time seems excessive (not that it's even hit 'battery full' and I know today the thing's been charging for the last 11 hours).

Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

That depends upon a few factors, such as what you mean by "in use" and the charging source.

For instance, my N800 drinks its fill of delicious electricity in well under eight hours each night while on, but idle, and charging via the AC adapter with which it came. If I leave the display set to stay on while charging, it does take longer to reach a full charge, but still well under eight hours. I'll venture a guess that it's closer to half that time.

On the other hand, I have also depleted my N800's battery while it was charging. I had the display on full brightness, I was streaming audio from an Internet radio station, and I had the speaker volume turned up to maximum. Additionally, I had some other applications open doing various things in the background, and I was only charging via a USB adapter and an AC-to-USB wall wart.

Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

Wow. I'm completely amazed by this.

I seriously turn off my Nokia every time, even when I go have a quick smoke outside at home then come back in to turn it on again.

It's probably going to take awhile for me to change my thinking on this.

Not turning the system off doesn't seem to make any sense to me.

Oh well. Maybe I'm just dumb. :confused:

Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

The bundled wallwart outputs significantly more power than the USB spec (500mA versus 890mA), so that would explain your trouble.

Charge time is about 30-45 minutes to 80% and 2-3 hours to 100%. It's more or less full if in-use time says 7 hours when CPU is at lowest level.

That works fine.

You're wasting a lot more power by turning it off and on all the time than you're likely to use letting it idle when not in use.

Do you turn off your cellphone whenever you're not using it? Or your computer?

The tablets are designed to be left on 24/7.

Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

Whoah.

Just like 'fit to view' that screws up and slows down my New York Times web page, leaving the unit on all the time until it *really* needs a charge seems kinda counter-intuitive.

I obviously am still on the slippery learning curve here :)

Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

If you tell the browser to break websites, it's gonna break websites. :)

Then just plug it in when you're around a charger and not using it. You'll be using less power anyway, so you'll also be doing less charging.

Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

For those of you confused by this, compare switching on something simple like an electric fan to switching on a desktop computer: the fan starts working straight away (it might take a while to spin but it starts spinning immediately), whereas the computer takes a relatively long time to set itself up to begin work.

Some PCs can take several minutes before they've finished doing all their startup stuff, and the whole time they're accessing the hard disk, loading drivers, running various programs, really DOING stuff. Once it's done that the computer calms down, it hardly ever accesses the disk, hardly ever starts a new process.

A computer has to work a LOT harder to get into a state where it is useful, whereas simple electrical devices don't have to do any work. That's why computers might use a lot more power starting up than simple electrical devices.

Desktop computers don't run off batteries so we don't notice it, but they too probably consume more power starting up than being left on standby. Tablets do lots of startup stuff just like a desktop computer, they have to work hard too to get started.



Try NOT turning it off. Try leaving it on forever, charging it while it's switched on so you don't run out of battery life.


I have no idea why your tablet would take 11 hours to charge, unless you're running lots of battery-hungry applications while you have it in standby?

My tablets have never taken anything like that long to charge, even when I have Skype running in the background.



This isn't anything specific to the tablets, this is a general issue with complex computers that run off batteries. If they take more energy powering up than being on standby, then leaving them on standby may make the battery last longer than switching them off.


I have never, ever had the N800 camera come out by itself, so I think it's an exaggeration to say that locking the screen doesn't help. It might not help if the camera comes out, but that's fairly rare at least in my experience.

Plus N810 and 770 owners don't have a pop-out camera at all.

Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

Yep, and I understood that when I purchased and used the USB adapters. Even so, I'll admit to momentary shock when the low battery warning popped up while my N800 was charging.

Also, according to the fine folks at DealExtreme, the USB power adapter I purchased supplies 1000mA. I suspect that's not actually true, and let me tell you, it's disappointing that in this day and age we can't put our full trust in a web-based outfit that sells tech products of questionable origin at ridiculously low prices that include shipping all the way from Hong Kong.

Re: Does switching off and on consume more power than standby?
 

Yeah, in more than a year of using my device on a daily basis, I've never once had the camera come out accidently.

Doesn't really matter, though, as you can turn off this feature in /etc/mce/mce.ini.