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Posts: 225 | Thanked: 81 times | Joined on Apr 2008
#8
Originally Posted by geneven View Post
Many people get an exaggerated idea of the battery drain by relying on the battery status statistics. They look at the status and it says that the battery is "almost full". Five minutes later the battery is empty, and they say "man, what a drain!"

The battery status statistics are basically worthless. In order to talk about battery drain, you need to measure how long the battery lasts from fully charged to almost empty. And even that is not so good, because wise techs here recommend against discharging your battery that far.

I'm not criticizing the posts above, just adding one fact to help put seeming incidents of rapid battery drain into perspective. It's like having a speedometer that goes from 0-60 in 1 second. It could be that your car is really powerful. Or it could be that the speedometer is broken.
What happens to me fairly regularly is I'll have charged up my N800 at home overnight. I'll then use it on the train on the way to work for 30 minutes or so. I then lock the screen, and put it away for a few hours. Then if I'm heading out to lunch, or heading home and pick up the tablet it will have switched itself off and won't turn back on until I charge it. I've found that if I leave it in offline mode this doesn't happen everyday, but it will still go from a full battery meter to turning itself off in a couple of hours of non-use.

On my laptop, it is set to hibernate when I close the lid, so I can walk away and come back a couple of weeks later and it will still have power. How can I get the same thing with the N800...I've read that turning it off is bad for battery life, but that obviously has to depend on how long you go between using it, right?