The Application must go on…802.11b and battery life

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/features/batterylife.html">http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/features/batterylife.html</a><br /><br />I'm a big fan of any sort of benchmarks and comparisons among Pocket PCs, so this article was an interesting read. I've done a lot of battery testing, and I'm almost ready to publish my results, but 802.11b isn't something I've tested. Might be time to do so. In the meantime, check out this article to see how iPAQ and Jornada Pocket PCs did with various 802.11b cards in testing.<br /><br />"Wireless infrastructure company, Enterprise Air, asked this question when designing its mission-critical wireless surveillance application, Mobile Mugshot. Through testing different hardware configurations, Enterprise Air found what they believe is the optimal hardware configuration for maximizing a Pocket PC’s useful battery life for a WiFi networked application. For wireless applications that require a persistent connection to the network, we found that older cards performed as well as newer so -called ‘low power’ WLAN cards. We also found that setting the device and network card driver settings to automatic gave the best battery life/usability combination. Third, and contrary to market reviews of the new PocketPC 2002 operating system, we found the older PocketPC 2000 OS lasted just as long as the newer PocketPC 2002. Last, we were impressed with the HP Jornada 568’s remarkably longer battery life although its expandability is limited when compared to the iPAQ’s system of expansion paks." Source: 80211dude

[Sven Johannsen]

Why do they always miss something obvious. They praised the stock Jornada, but...
From our tests, we concluded the D-Link card was the better bet, but we would not be able to use this card with a Jornada since it is too big to fit in the CF1 slot.

Guess they never heard of the Jornada PCCard expansion pak with the extended life battery. My guess would be the D-Link in that configuration would be awe inspiring.

[dochall]

It would be really good to see a compartive test of Wifi Cards and battery life.

I would be interested in seeing a comparison of Wifi Card form factors (CF vs PCMCIA) and as an Ipaq user I would be interested in the new sleds (with batteries) against the old ones.

I don't have the hardware to do a comprehensive test (I have a couple of PCMCIA wifi card - WL100 and DWL650). Although I am teetering on the brink of going CF although previous investment in PCMCIA (network card, voyager, sleds, etc.) is giving me pause for thought.

If we could agree a common test methodology we could get a few people to do the test and then publish the results.

Would people be interested?

[Sven Johannsen]

It would be really good to see a compartive test of Wifi Cards and battery life.


I'm assuming you mean more cards. This article is about three different WiFi cards and various configurations of PPCs and the battery life.

I don't think you'll get exceptionally meaningful data with various testers involved. My putting an Orinoco card in my Jornada and comparing it to your putting a symbol in yours,already has more variables than you want. And unless we both had some application that exercised the network consistantly that would introduce another variable.

[dochall]

It would be really good to see a compartive test of Wifi Cards and battery life.

I don't think you'll get exceptionally meaningful data with various testers involved. My putting an Orinoco card in my Jornada and comparing it to your putting a symbol in yours,already has more variables than you want. And unless we both had some application that exercised the network consistantly that would introduce another variable.

That's why you have a standardised test methodology.

[Jason Dunn]

If we could agree a common test methodology we could get a few people to do the test and then publish the results.

The simplest one would be to use the PING utility included in most 802.11b drivers. Ping until the Pocket PC dies. :-)

[Sven Johannsen]

That's why you have a standardised test methodology.

I understand the concept, but you can't have a standardized methodology if the devices are all different. I could test two CF cards in my PPC and make some statements about the two CF cards. I could put a CF card in my PPC, ship the card to you and you put it in your PPC and we could say something about the two PPCs. If we each put a different card in our different PPCs (even same model), we can say stuff, but the meaning is a bit limited, though not useless.

Jason's idea of ping has merit. I wouldn't personally want to run mine until data loss. ("till it dies"). Wonder why the OEMs haven't done something like this. Surely the winner would have no qualms about publishing the results:)

[bbarker]

I can't think of any way in which the Jornada is less expandable than the iPaq.

[Jason Dunn]

Jason's idea of ping has merit. I wouldn't personally want to run mine until data loss. ("till it dies")

I've run countless devices into the ground doing my battery tests, and trust me, there is no data loss UNLESS you then don't charge it for a few days. All have backup battery power of some sort, remember? :-)