2215 - what is the "standby" tab in power settings for?

[DualShock]

I've read the manual at HP's web site about this "standby" tab in power settings, but it makes no sense to me. What does the slider do? What should I set it to? Will it increase my battery life? :frusty:

Thanks in advance.

[Sven Johannsen]

I think it is confusing too, but here is my understanding. You have one battery..no backup. You can adjust what you want to consider the main battery and the backup battery, sort of like partitioning it.

You do this by identifying how long you want to have the reserve (backup) keep your data viable once the main battery runs down to virtual nothing. You do this by selecting the amount of time you want the 2215 to keep your data safe after telling you it is out of juice.

Think of it like a gas tank. You have a 10 gallon tank, and you get 10 miles per gallon. You can set part of that as 'reserve', by selecting 30 miles, the distance you want to be able to go when the pointer says Empty. That means your pointer is at empty when you have used 7 gallons. You could set the reserve to 50 miles, which means your pointer says empty after 5 gallons, a lot sooner, but you can still go 50 miles on empty.

For the PPC it seems like your situation would dictate your setting. If you like to run your PPC a long time, but are pretty sure you can get to a charger quickly when it says the battery is drained, go for short standby. If you don't use it a lot, but may not be able to get to a charger for a day or two (48 hrs) after it cuts you off, go for the longer standby time.

Hope that helps.

[KiLLiN-TiMe]

Correct me if im wrong but from what i was told (dont know for sure cause i havent tried it myself) is that once you reach the point that you have used the battery to the point that it has your standby time left. It will go into a sorta sleep mode that you cant do anything until you charge it enough to bring the charge above your settings.
Is this right?
I would think that if this is true you should be able to at least go in and adjust the standby time to a shorter time in order to finnish any important work.

[Sven Johannsen]

That's true. I've run it down that far and it wouldn't power on. I didn't know if the iPAQ had just locked up (as it is wont to do occasionally). So I hit the reset button. That rebooted the device and showed the low battery warning when it came up, just long enough for me to read it before it shut itself back off. I wouldn't have had the time to change any settings.

Keep a charger at the office, and in the car, and maybe one of those emergency doohickeys if you are the type that pushes the limits. I haven't lost anything, I was just without usable iPAQ until I got to juice once or twice (maybe more ;) )

[mr_Ray]

Basically you have two batteries in your iPAQ

Main battery
Small(!) internal backup battery good for a few minutes (some say up to 30 but I wouldn't trust it past 5) to cover you for swapping batteries.

The iPAQ therefore reserves a %age of the main battery for keeping your data alive until you can get to a charger. This is the time period you can set in the standby tab - 24 to 72 hours. If you know you're never going to be more than 24 hours away from a power point then go for the 24 hours minimum and give yourself that extra hour or so running time before it powers down to protect it's memory.

Of course, a regular backup should mean you can get away it more, too.

[Chris Pi]

Say you set the Standby tab to 24 hours, will you still get the low battery warning at 39% or will it be a different %? I ask this because I read that 40% is as low as you should go before re-charging (correct me if this is wrong).