About usage of n800!
 

I had used the palm and ppc for more than 8 years. I have already used to the operation of pda.

For n800, I still can't used to it.

Because for pdas, I can switch off the power button to save battery and if I wanto use it again just press the power button.

For n800, I press the power button, it will show 4 options for me to choose, I always choose the switchoff. but next time when I wanto use it, switch it on, and it will cost pretty much time to start it compared to the pdas startup time.

Could anyone tell me how to do the operation like the pda?

All the best!

Tiger

Re: About usage of n800!
 

The Nokia Internet Tablets are designed to be "Always On" devices which means that you should never really have to turn them off. Just lock the screen/buttons using the lock slider then let the device go to sleep the same way you would a laptop computer.

The device actually uses MORE power shutting down and starting back up again than if you were to just leave it on but asleep for multiple hours.

So a quick answer to your question: Just leave it and let it go to sleep :) You don't have to bother turning it off to save battery :)

*A side note: the power button on PalmPilots actually doesn't turn the device off. It only turns the screen off and clocks the processor down. Letting the N800 go to sleep achieves a very similar result*

Hope this helps :)

Re: About usage of n800!
 

Internet tablets used to have a "secret" mode, called "softpoweroff", which would lock screen and keys, stop all wireless services, put the processor into power saving mode (except if stuff like a music player is running) and blank the screen.

It was relatively easy to remap the powerkey to invoke softpoweroff, if you knew how to use an editor and how to use the search function of this forum (my tablet invokes softpoweroff on a long press on the power button). However, Nokia "chose" to b0rk up softpoweroff on ITOS2008, so now you have to install Powerlaunch and learn a complete and arcane programming language to get back functionality that was there before.

Re: About usage of n800!
 

Just to clarify things, there is no "lock slider" on the N800. You can choose "Lock Screen" from the menu that pops up when you press the power button.
Switchin off the device is a bad idea as josiahg777 already pointed out. Booting up takes a lot of battery power worth several days of standby.

Re: About usage of n800!
 

To use Powerlaunch, you don't need to learn an arcane language at all. You need to learn the arcane language to make the N800 work the way Karel misses. Just don't get a brain transplant, and you won't miss what he misses.

But Powerlaunch is a good thing to add.

Re: About usage of n800!
 

Not if battery life is important in my experience. I get better standby times out of my n800 without powerlaunch...

Re: About usage of n800!
 

I used to think I was smart to leave the power on and let the N800 go to sleep. Until it wouldn't wake up that is. Sometimes the battery just drains in a couple hours and you have no idea why because whatever you left running is now off. If I am travelling and won't be near a plug to recharge, I always turn it off when I am not using it.

Re: About usage of n800!
 

The web browser is the only really wicked thing I've seen WRT battery; RSS reader was supposed to be bad too, but I never used it. The browser sometimes starts cranking away madly (I'm not sure of any site-specific correlation, because once it starts, it doesn't stop no matter what site you go to...) and though it doesn't have much effect on performance of other apps, it does drain the battery. I just close the browser when I'm untethered for any length of time, and I get standby times like they should be.

BTW, in Diablo (public release expected around month's end, more or less) the softpoweroff is working again, it seems. You can set up that on long or double-tap of powerswitch and get reasonably decent behavior; never had trouble with it dying in a few hours.

Re: About usage of n800!
 

Look up "metalayer crawler" and how to disable it (but make sure you know what functionality you'll miss if you do -- hint: not much) to prevent these drainages.

In a normal Itablet this is the only culprit unduly quaffing gogo-juice.

Re: About usage of n800!
 

Actually, the old way was to change one line in mce.ini. I even wrote up a step by step guide on this forum on how to do it.

I've looked at Powerlauch and it makes my brain hurt. Apparently there's a default mode when you install it that kinda mimicks mce.ini's behaviour, but I never liked that behaviour and I have absolutely no idea how to get it to do what I want; to call the documentation on the home site "spartan" would be a compliment: it's basically a man page of the daemon which, for such an important function that is supposed to be for the average enduser, is a joke.

Frankly, this program should come with a graphical front-end, especially as the announced functionality includes use of the Itablet's buttons to control arbitrary applications.

But hey! I couldn't care less. When I get my Pandora, the N800 will join my 770 as a rarely-used ebook-reader. Or maybe I'll turn them into digital photo frames. I have no intention of continuing to spend much energy on a device that repeatedly gets crippled by its own manufacturer. Enough is enough...

Re: About usage of n800!
 

You know, a part of me wants to believe that. Unfortunately, it is a microscopic part compared to the cynical part of me that just says: "What else will they break this time?"

(Sidenote: I did have power outages under softpoweroff, but only due to the metalayer crawler going berserk. I haven't had a dry suck since I disabled that son of a Colossus)

Re: About usage of n800!
 

Wrong. The documentation is much more extensive than a man page for the daemon; there's a few more pages you probably missed, as the site structure is, shall we say, not precisely intuitive. Spartan's not so bad as long as it's got everything you need; it does. (On three or four different pages...)

I agree a GUI would be nice, but it's highly non-essential for what's essentially a hacker's tool. It's not meant to fix OS2008's broken softpoweroff; that's just one pleasant effect which makes it much more broadly recommended that its intended application would justify.

And thanks for mentioning metalayer-crawler; I'd forgotten about it. :o Of course you should disable it...

Re: About usage of n800!
 

Look, I have no info at all from inside Nokia, but my guess is OS2008 was kind of rushed out the door because they needed to support the N810, and all that support was in their new OS; I think it wasn't really ready (perhaps running behind, or perhaps the release schedule got bumped up), but they had to fix it as best they could and ship. That's the bad thing about software tied to hardware; you've got hard deadlines that can't be pushed back just because it's buggy.

Diablo is something much like OS2008 would have been, if they could have finished it right instead of rushing to ship something. At least that's how it feels from here.

Pure speculation, of course...

Re: About usage of n800!
 

My current habit is to shut down any network app, go to offline mode and lock the screen. Anything else results in a soon dead battery for me.

Re: About usage of n800!
 

I just shove the N800 into softpoweroff with the dbl press when listening to tracks. mce in diablo works a hell of a lot better with this than chinook does. Although pocket mode in powerlaunch is a nice idea...

Re: About usage of n800!
 

i hope that beyond diablo, we will not have to wait for full firmware releases to get to odd problem fixed. as in, ones diablo is out, future updates can be done via the app manager?

Re: About usage of n800!
 

Definitely, but many things (to specific apps, like xterm) could have been pushed that way already; it's not clear to me how much we'll be seeing in terms of more frequent releases.

Re: About usage of n800!
 

ugh, thanks for bursting that bubble...

nokia seems to really be messing up that community involvement part...

but then they are not really alone. that eeepc is equally hit or miss, but with it being a X86 base, its easier to find alternatives...

Re: About usage of n800!
 

They're doing pretty good, considering, IMHO, but it'd be nice to be able to pull that ''considering'' out...

Still, we're making some good progress on alternatives with Debian, and Nokia does seem to be improving their end. (Thanks JohnX, for the package, and Qole, for the friendly chrootage!)

Re: About usage of n800!
 

Hi,guys:

Thanks a lot for your advice.

Last night I have follow the steps recommended by your guys.

I charge it to full at 10:00pm, and start to surf at bed from 11:00pm to 12:12am(about 1 and half hours), and I set n800 to "offline mode", then continue set it to "lock touchscreen and keys". and put it on the ground.

Today I pick it up at about 4:00pm, and I found it already run out of battery, I should press power button to restart it again, and in the right cnr, the battery icon appear red color.

So what's meaning of "standby up to 12 days"?

does it mean that I can't operate n800 like this?

All the best!

Tiger