T3 - alarming battery drain.

P

Peatea

New member
My T3, which had a 100% battery level at 0730 this morning, has obviously completely drained itself as it now won't even turn on. I noticed at about 1000 it was at 54%.
Now nothing special is on, no bluetooth etc, the screen was off most of the morning so has this happened to any others? The machine is only a week old.
Does a Palm have programs running in the background like, shall we say, a P900? I use SMan on the P900 to end running programs but I was under the impression that the Palm OS did not work in this way.
Doug
PS. My cradle is obviously at home... :-(
 
I have read on the Iambic support forums that Crash is a good utility to use. It will automatically make the device do a soft reset instead of letting the battery drain.
 
Except for bluetooth, there's nothing that runs in the backgroud on a T3. As you saidm the Palm OS is not multitasking so everything is shut downwhen the Palm is turned off. If you're sure you didn't leave bluetooth on then I suspect you have a bad battery or bad charging circuit. In either case, since it's only a week old, I wouldn't fool with it. Just get an advance exchange from Palm and get a replacement.
 
When you first bought it, how long did you charge it? Initial charge is important.

Let it run all the way down til it dies. Then charge it for about 4 hours or slightly longer. Use it til it drops way down, then charge it AGAIN for 4+ hours.

Do not turn it on while charging. Just leave it on the cradle and leave it alone.

If this doesn't "amp it up" to provide 4 hours of continuous use, do as Jim suggested and get rid of it. When you get the NEXT one, remember to charge it all the way for 3-4-5 hours before turning it on.

Another thought: there is a reset you can do on the cradle - I don't know if it's a regular soft reset or "warm" is required - but it resets the battery settings. You might try that and then CERTAINLY LEAVE IT ON for 3 hours plus )5 wouldn't hurt!) and that may get it back to "normal."

I believe by doing some or all of the above, you can avoid dumping it for another, hopefully.
 
Thanks for your input both of you. I'm sure I did the initial charge as you suggested but as it was a new toy and I couldn't wait to get on with it, I might just have taken a shortcut or two! Can't remember.
I've recharged it now and it now sits on my desk at 100%. A couple of questions?
I have noticed that when the leather cover that comes with the Palm is over the screen and I am near my computer, I get the "a computer wants to beam you a file" message even though the port is not facing the IR port on the laptop. I presume the beam function is on but I cannot find out how to turn it off. It must be reflected by that cover.
Also I have an IR keyboard and I noticed that this was enabled, perhaps this helped to drain the battery although the way it went down was alarming!
I will see what happens today, perhaps it was just one of those things. I am loathe to change it, it is only a week old and I don't really want the hassle of returning it and getting possibly older secondhand goods.
Doug
 
Done it, thanks for the pointer. Strangely enough, the battery has been 100% since I took it off the cradle this morning. Must have been all that shouting at it I did yesterday!
Doug
 
I think you identified the rpoblem. If beam receive is turned on and there's any IR port in the vicinity, like you laptop or keyboard, the Palm will constantly cycle on looking for what the port is trying to send. This can easily run a battery flat overnight. Keep the beam receive truned of until you need it. This will increase your battery life even if there is no IR port in the vicinity since the IR port will periodically check for the existence of another IR port.
 
And, to AVOID getting that nagging "DO you want to turn Beam Receive On" screen there is an OS5 HACK, that runs under "YAHM ("Yet Another HackManager" - called "No Beam Dialog."

I have it under favorites; I'll research and add the link. Yahm is 55k , the hack is 1k - and no more dialog. You can also get (freeware) "NoDotHack 1.0," same place, which removes the annoying underline when editing text. Very handy if you use Colorize to get rid of the lines in the first place - nice clear "typewriter sheet" instead of those goofy lines I never understood!!

Not having the "beam turn on" Dialog is a big help when you BEAM something to someone else and don't want the nag.

Let me look that up . . . OKAY. First link to YAHM (free):
http://yahm.palmoid.com/

Then here's the link to the OS5 hacks (10 of 'em) and directly to NoBeamDialog/NoDot:
http://yahm.palmoid.com/#8

Enjoy and congrats on battery being OK -
 
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