Please help out a total newbie!

[Vashe]

Hello all, first of all I'd like to say I'm very glad I found out this forum, it seems like there's a nice atmosfere going on here and everything, people seem very helpful, something which is always appreciated on boards. Good work and keep it up!

Now up to my problem.

This year my eductation is orientated to programming and we needed an ipaq because we are going to make custom programs for that at school.

So allright, off I go, we don't need anything big and I have a very limited budget (being a student is hard at sometimes) so I start searching on ebay and find this ipaq h3130 for a real good price from a trustable seller. I pay him, ipaq arrives here in good shape, all new in the box, all new.

I plug it in, put up the cradle that came with it as an extra and start loading it so I can use it later on.

As long as the ipaq is connected with the charger everything goes great but then the next day I leave the house and off to school I want to put it on to play a little solitaire while sitting on the bus. After only THREE MINUTES it went out, there was no way in the world to set it on again.

So I get home and decide to load it for a whole night, next day, again, same story :(

I even tried loading it for 48 hours (ridiculous imo) and even then, no way to get it working, the battery just leaves me in the cold.

I contacted the seller about it and he is prepared to send me a new one since it seems that this one isn't functioning correctly.

Now before I send it back, I would like to get some feedback from you vet's in the pda world.

Has there been a history of defective ipaq's on this particular model?

Is there anything left for me to try out to load it properly before returning it?

I'm looking forward to you guys feedback on this.

Friendly regards from Brussels, Belgium

Jason

[stevemw]

Just making sure -- you do have the cradle plugged into an electrical outlet (there should be two cables coming out of the rear of the cradle -- one connects to the computer and the other connects to a power source using the AC adapter that came with the cradle.

[kniaz]

Did you check the battery indicator to see if you have a full charge? If you do, and it turns off in 3 minutes - just sit there and watch the indicator.

Look at the indicator while the Ipaq is in the craddle and see if it says that it is charging and if the power indicator is increasing.

[pigpen]

Do check the power meter in the control panel as it is in the cradle...most ipaqs will also blink a light on the top to show they are charging....the default timeout for the screen is like 30 seconds....the older ipaqs would blank the screen and you would have to hold the power button down for about a second to turn the screen back on....but if you let it go too soon, it would just turn off all the way.....always silly, IMO....once the power light stops blinking, it should be fully charged....if it dies after three minutes and you are sure that it charged fully and that it isn't just asleep, send it back.