I have a number of questions regarding battery life and my new Z.
1) When I first got it the other day, I got so excited that i didn't wait for it to fully charge before using. I kept it plugged in, but within about 5 minutes (Actually, however long it took between the time I first plugged it in and it first came on while I stood there repeatedly pressing the power button ).
So I checked out the screen that had received so many rave reviews, went through the setup process, got my wi-fi connection going, and then shut it down to continue charging for the rest of the evening (although I may have only put it in standby since I just pressed the power button to turn it off).
Could this negatively affect the long-term conditioning of my batter? And if so, what should I do now to reverse any damage I may have caused?
2) After searching for answers to question #1, I read that I should fully discharge and recharge my battery about 3-4 times for optimum conditioning. I still haven't charged my unit for a full 24 hours. Is this critical? Or will I be fine if I do it now (my 3rd cycle)?
3) How can I shutdown my zaurus? I followed some links to shutdown applications, but they were dead. Is it even important to completely shutdown the Z during these primary charge/discharge conditioning cycles? Or is shutdown mainly useful for traveling or long rests between use?
Related to this: after these initial conditioning cycles, do I need to continue to fully discharge my Z before charging to maintain optimum battery life? Or are you all just plugging it in when you aren't using it (or, like me, do you always use it until it goes dead?!)?
4) How should I turn off wi-fi when it's not in use? Is the adapter not drawing juice as long as it's not connected to a network (i.e., I don't try to connect to a web page and the Z isn't trying to locate a wireless network)? Or, after I use opera and then disconnect from my network, does the card still draw juice until I manually turn it off from the command line?
5) I used to know a command to check the condition of the battery of my laptop under linux. It would give the maximum capacity and its current capacity relative to its max. After the current capacity (after a full charge) was about half the max capcity, one could determine whether the battery was shot.
Does anyone know of that command or a similar one so I can at least see how the health of my battery looks?
Thank you very much for your help on this board so far. It's been a real pleasure to obtain my first PDA with linux and do so among some really cool people.
