microdrive and battery life

[windmilltilting]

I just got a magicstor 2.2 gb. I noticed that my battery was running down rather quickly, and I ran a test. Although not statistically sound, my data indicates that the microdrive sucked the life from my battery. I can reasonably expect that with the MD, I will get about 7 hours of standby with no radios, and the backlight on minimum, compared to a Lexar 64 Meg card and the same conditions getting 16 hours, and no card at 18. I am sending the magicstor back. Can anyone else relay thier experience with microdrives or bigger flash cards. Leave SD out of it. I want more storage, and I want to make a more educated buying decision this time. I am using a 2755 Ipaq, and checking the standby time on the battery\power options.

[Kowalski]

i am sure that your device has optimisations on eighter OS level or on windows media player.. but no matter how much optimisations they have, you are spinning a plate with a speed of 4200 rpm/min!

i suggest you to buy a solid state card, the prices of CF cards reduced lately.
a microdrive still costs less, but it will suck out your battery.

you should check out dell online stores, AFAIK they have the best prices

[BUMP THAT]

Get one at dell. They have them for like 30% off. I got my Ultra II CF from there. It is very fast and battery lif has not been struck horribly down.

[windmilltilting]

Has any tried the hitachi drives? That is where I am leaning. The stats seem to indicate better battery performance than the magicstor.

[BUMP THAT]

I almost bought one. But I still think it would hit performance of battery life bad. Just get a Ultra from Dell. You wont regret it... At least I havent ;)

[SHC]

I've had my Hitachi 4GB MD for about 2 weeks now. Subjectively I have noticed a little more battery drain than when using CF. I use betaplayer in microdrive mode when listening to music etc, seems to work well. The drive spins briefly for a few seconds before each track. And I know this is really sad but there is someting strangey satisfying about hearing the drive whurring away in the background!

[windmilltilting]

What device are you using SHC? If you have wm2003se, can you check your standby time with the drive inserted and without?

[SHC]

Well that's interesting. Without MD 5.7 hours, with MD 5.6. That's repeating the test and allowing it to settle. Pretty good. With the drive spinning its' 3.6, when stopped it went back up to 5.3
Edit: Using WMP to play 3mb track 2.5 hrs, using beta player in microdrive mode to play same track 4.6 hrs

[windmilltilting]

SHC, What ppc do you have? And how bright do you keep the backlight?

[SHC]

iPaq 4700, back light on full all the time.
I believe the Hitachi drives have a bigger internal cache than Magicstore ones.

[abarry]

Using WMP to play 3mb track 2.5 hrs, using beta player in microdrive mode to play same track 4.6 hrs

Where can I get this beta player?

Atul.

[SHC]

You can get it here: http://betaplayer.corecodec.org/download.html
It's totally free too. It comes in 2 versions, stable and unstable. Unstable just means the latest beta version. I'm using the latest unstable version without problem. It's not as glossy as other media players but far, far better. Lots of settings to play around with and it has a "microdrive mode"
Oh, and for those who use iPods, it plays AAC files too.

[windmilltilting]

Thankyou SHC. I've been trying to get some real information on this since I sent back my magicstor almost 2 weeks ago. I really apreciate your help.

[SHC]

Your welcome, I too had a Magicstor which broke. I was sceptical about getting another microdrive but heard good reports about Hitachi drives. Because the £ is so strong against the $ it was worth while importing one from the US. I'm extemely pleasesd with it. It is so much better than the Magicstor, it seems to use less power and even sounds different too.

[applejosh]

You can get it here: http://betaplayer.corecodec.org/download.html
It's totally free too. It comes in 2 versions, stable and unstable. Unstable just means the latest beta version. I'm using the latest unstable version without problem.

According the version numbers and the dates of files, the stable version is actually newer than the "unstable" version. (0.5 vs. 0.096)

I'm using the stable version (occassionally), and it works quite well.

[SHC]

I don't think the stable and beta version numbers bear any relationship to each other. :?:

[Darius Wey]

I don't think the stable and beta version numbers bear any relationship to each other. :?:

BetaPlayer's version numbering system doesn't really follow any standard. But FYI, the v0.5 release is the newer one. :)

[applejosh]

I'll admit that I haven't followed the numbering scheme all that closely, but the previous stable version was 0.04, and I thought I remembered the unstable versions going up from there (0.05x,...,0.096), and then the stable version making a jump from 0.04 to 0.5 a couple weeks after the last unstable version. So it seemed to make sense to me if I paid close enough attention to whether there was a zero after the point or not. But then again, I could just be crazy (which has been hypothesized more than a few times).

[SHC]

Oh well, I live and learn. Better run along and get the latest version then!
Thanks for the correction.

[p5657587]

About betaplayer betas, 0.096 beta is not the latest beta that is out.

http://picard.exceed.hu/betaplayer/test/

It seems that there is a 0.50b...

[windmilltilting]

I got the Hitachi 2 GB MD. The battery life is much better, acceptable, and clearly superior. I am getting standby times of 15 hours or so with the card inserted, the backlight at minimum (I work nights), and no programs running.