PDA's: Horrible battery life with 802.11

[angelseye2000]

Dale's review of the Toshiba e740: He got 1 hour 45 minutes when using 802.11b and that's without transferring ANYTHING!! Bluetooth takes a LOT less juice to run. Again I'd also point out that it seems as if there are multiple "standards" out there right now for Wi-Fi. A and B. Bluetooth is an added benefit of the Loox. But for some people Wi-Fi is essential. If they need to upgrade, either at work or home, they are screwed. Personally I'd rather stick with external Wi-Fi then internal. (by Jonathan)

Toshiba Pocket PC e740
400MHz, SD, CF type II AND integrated 802.11b wireless!
June 17, 2001 by Dale Coffing

Pros

-Integrated dual slots (CF type II and SD) yet remains sleek and slim.
-Built-in 802.11 Wi-Fi
-Removable battery (1000 mAH)
-Future options are impressive starting with the High Capacity battery to the expansion slot.
-Improved apps such as Battery meter showing single digit percentages battery life, Databackup allowing for renaming of the default backup file name, Fixing the name of SD memory to Storage Card2 and CF to Storage Card.
-24/7 Phone Tech Support

Cons

-Battery life is hit pretty hard having the 802.11 on board.
-Screen although more than adequate falls short because of its smaller size and the Frontlight is a little weak in bathing the screen uniformly. The result is darker areas on the screen.
-Because it is brand new not all options will be ready such as the ThinkOutside keyboard, etc.
-Software issues exist that I couldn't fix. GPS is one of my favorite applications and CoPilot ver 3 the CF version would lock up and not run with some of the apps actually running slightly slower.

more
http://www.pocketpcpassion.com/toshiba/e740/e740-1.htm

[seanturner]

The nice thing about the iPaq with its external PCMCIA sleve is that it has an extra external battery to power the card so it doesn't have that noticable an impact on battery performance.

[Dave Conger]

Dale's review of the Toshiba e740: He got 1 hour 45 minutes when using 802.11b and that's without transferring ANYTHING!! Bluetooth takes a LOT less juice to run. Again I'd also point out that it seems as if there are multiple "standards" out there right now for Wi-Fi. A and B. Bluetooth is an added benefit of the Loox. But for some people Wi-Fi is essential. If they need to upgrade, either at work or home, they are screwed. Personally I'd rather stick with external Wi-Fi then internal. (by Jonathan)

Don't attempt to compare WiFi and Bluetooth on their power consumption. Other then the two technolgies being wireless, they aren't really the same at all. WiFi is long range, Bluetooth is short range. WiFi also is 11Mbps and Bluetooth is less then 1Mbps. If you boosted the Bluetooth signal to have a higher transfer rate (for short ranges) and a stronger signal that would carry at least 10 times as far, I think you would find that battery life would degrage quite a bit as well.

[angelseye2000]

Don't attempt to compare WiFi and Bluetooth on their power consumption. Other then the two technolgies being wireless, they aren't really the same at all. WiFi is long range, Bluetooth is short range. WiFi also is 11Mbps and Bluetooth is less then 1Mbps. If you boosted the Bluetooth signal to have a higher transfer rate (for short ranges) and a stronger signal that would carry at least 10 times as far, I think you would find that battery life would degrage quite a bit as well.

Tell me about dave. The last thing i wanna do is 2 compare both. I just want to show that WiFi has his (pros and) minors also, besides the doom and gloom stories people talk and write concerning Bluetooth. All i hear and read is (st@pid) comparing things like "802.11 is much faster" or "802.11 has bigger range". Both are true, but you can't compare 2 different technologies for different needs. It's like comparing a car with a bicycle......

Bluetooth and (not Versus) Wi-Fi (802.11) articles
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=PALM&read=33477

Scientist tips features of Bluetooth 2.0 (gross rates of 4, 8 and 12 Mbits per second)
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020611S0033

Talked to a few companies on the Bluetooth Congress but a few are sceptical about a faster Bluetooth version (see: closer to 802.11, what about the power advantage?.....)

Time will tell.