e740 Batter Life

[mfa]

The battery in my e740 seems to drain to zero in week or so without even using it. I do not have wireless enabled. I intend to get the high-capacity battery some day when they become readily available, but, still, I think the normal battery should last more than a week when the thing is not being used. Any thoughts?

[jmagid]

I had an E740 for about 2 days and found out that with the WiFi
turned on the pwoer drained in about an hour and a half. I tried also to use it without the WiFi and found I hadb about 4-6 hours before I lost the battery.

I finally gave up and sent it back. I bought an IPAQ 3950 instead.:mad:

[pcorbett]

I may never buy a Toshiba product again, I’m trying to figure out how I can get rid of this e740 without losing the $600 I paid for it!

I purchased my Pocket PC 9/20/02. I used it successfully for about 3 weeks with only minor problems (see below), then weird stuff started happening regarding the charging of the battery. The first major problem was after charging it overnight (at least 8 hours), I drove to work with it (not in use or turned on for about 45 minutes). I turned it on when I got to work and got this warning:

"Main Battery Very Low
To prevent possible data loss, replace or recharge your battery according to the owner's manual."

When I looked in the power settings, it showed 1% battery remaining... After quickly putting it on the charger, it went to 90+% after about 5 minutes. I called Toshiba this time and they didn't know anything. Then I think it worked trouble free for a few days, and then this whole thing happened again, only now it wouldn't charge at all. Tried hard resetting which did nothing to improve the situation. Called Toshiba again, gee they didn't know but I might have to send it in. I lamented about that for close to a week, talked to the store where I bought it (CompUSA) to see about exchanging it there - no luck so far. Finally, I called Toshiba back and low and behold, now they have a recall about a problem that sounds related (since they're giving us such vague information about the problem). They said I would have to send it in. I asked them what they would be doing, they said a software upgrade and replacing the battery - I got this answer from two techs that day. So, 11/2/02 about a week later (did I mention that they don't do any pre-shipping of a replacement secured by a credit card, like most other computer related companies?) I got my e740 back. I had been rather diligent about writing down information such as my serial numbers, part/model numbers (battery and pocket pc). I also noted some Windows information such as the number that it shows when you do a reset (I'm guessing this is the ROM version), version/build of Pocket PC, MAC address and version information for the wireless NIC, etc.

When I got the e740 back, it was the exact same battery; the ROM version was changed (new: 1.0618.0409,old: 1.0203.0409), the wireless utility version (new: 1.0.14, old: 1.0.11) was changed as well as the MAC address. The next day, after I charged it for over 12 hours (before using it), I started trying to use it (fully charged). After about 2 to 3 minutes, I got the infamous warning above and it showed 1% battery. I put it back on the charger and it wouldn’t charge (yellow light I believe, that indicates the temperature is not right and it won’t charge – the temperature where it charges is always 69-70). I was furious and called Toshiba. The first person (customer service recall people) was sorry but he couldn’t do anything, he transferred me to technical support to troubleshoot the problem. Tech support finally (after about 40 minutes) agreed to send a battery, I even convinced them that maybe they should ship it overnight instead of the ‘ground’ they were insisting on. He also created a second case number and escalated that to the ATS group, for whatever that’s worth – nothing so far. I received a new battery 11/5. It worked fine until today 11/9. After it charged all night, I turned it on and before I even selected the application I was going to use, I got the battery warning. I called Toshiba, the ATS group apparently doesn’t work on Saturday and the regular guy in technical support said “I don’t know what I can do for you until Monday”, I asked to speak to a supervisor and got voicemail (not even a name, just an extension). I’ll be calling back soon after I post this on as many bulletin boards as possible.


Minor problems referenced above:
Constant soft resets necessary, action buttons work almost never. Strange power button action, like it won't turn off, sometimes it will just turn off the backlight when you hit the power button, etc.