Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 13:48:17 06/15/00
Go up one level in this thread
On June 15, 2000 at 08:08:20, Marc Plum wrote:
>I got a Palm IIIxe not long ago. Naturally, I had to get a Chess program for
>it. I tried Pocket Chess, found it very weak and removed it. Then I tried
>Chess Genius 1.1. It plays a very respectable game, and I was glad to pay the
>$25 registration.
>
>I'm wondering though, whether it is normal for certain Palm applications to use
>up more of the life of the batteries. When I've played Chess Genius, even in a
>half hour session, the Palm's battery indicator goes down very noticeably. By
>contrast, the other application that I am likely to use for a long stretch is a
>doc reader/editor, and this does not seem to drain the batteries nearly as much.
> Of course, the Palm battery graph is a very rough indicator, but still, I used
>up a new pair of batteries in 8 days after installing Chess Genius.
>
>I'm thinking that an application that involves deep calculation might make the
>processor work harder and use more energy, but I don't find anything about this
>on the Palm support page. Has anyone else noticed this?
>
>Marc
Yes, I have noticed this too.
I would recommend you to buy NiMH rechargeable batteries (not NiCd, they don't
last long enough) and the appropriate charger.
I personally use 2 x 500mAh AAA NiMH rechargeable batteries and I'm very happy
with them. I actually have 2 pairs, so I recharge one pair when I'm using the
other one. Recharging takes 6 hours.
On normal use, my NiMH batteries can power my PalmIIIx for 15 days (even if I
regularly use the backlight screen).
When I use my Palm to play chess (with ChessGenius), I can exhaust the batteries
in just one day (say 10 hours).
The Palm's power management is very well designed. Everything in hardware and
software is designed to save power as much as possible. When you read a document
for example, the Palm displays the page then immediately go into doze mode. As
soon as you press a button or tap on the touch screen, it goes back to full
speed.
However, when ChessGenius ot another computing intensive task is running, the
power saving strategies cannot be activated, and the batteries are heavily
drained.
I think the situation is even worse on WinCE computers. I hear that their
batteries last for one day on normal use, so I fear that if you use a WinCE
computer to play chess you probably exhaust the batteries in one hour. Has
anybody some experience with WinCE computers?
I would also recommend that you use a software to overclock your Palm. As you
have a PalmIIIxe, the freeware AfterBurner 2.2 should be perfect for you. I have
overclocked my PalmIIIx from 16.5MHz to 26MHz, giving it a 258% speedup! For
chess, the playing strength will be dramatically increased.
I have NOT noticed a significant change in battery life when I overclocked my
Palm. Anyway, I can recharge a pair of my NiMH batteries before the other one is
exhausted! :)
Christophe
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