Battery extender

[chee]

Hi

I use my palm to do extended reading while travelling so I find the battery insufficient. I am planning to buy a battery extender from ebay - the ones that use AA batteries to recharge the palm. I also have rechargeable AA batteries so the whole thing looks good to me.

Has someone used such a product and found any bad things? Is there a possibility of my damaging the CLIE's internal battery by using this, or reducing the life of the battery?

Thanks
Chee

[Valwit]

Has someone used such a product and found any bad things? Is there a possibility of my damaging the CLIE's internal battery by using this, or reducing the life of the battery?

According to a disscussion on de.comp.sys.handhelds.palm-pilot you probably won't be able to get a full charge with rechargeable AAs because they have only 1.2V instead of 1.5V. Normal batterys should work fine.

The internal battery shouldn't be damaged, it's Li-Ion - no need to be fully charged or discharged like NiMH or NiCd.

[pun]

Hey
I was planning to use the battery extender with NiMH rechargeable batteries.
can anyone share his/her experience if rechargeable batteries work fine or only Normal battries should be used ?
Thanks

[chee]

in the extender I dont think any battery time should matter - Valwit was talking about the battery in the palm

[Valwit]

It depends what kind of an extender it is. If it's like a second battery and there's no problem with to low voltage then it should work with NiMH rechargeable batteries too. If the extender is meant to chrage the internal battery then you'll probably have a problem if the extender is designed for normal batteries and you put rechargeable batteries into. The voltage will be to low to fully recharge the palm.

Dunno where you from, but if you european then you should be able to buy the thing, try it out (write here if it worked ;) and in case it is not working like you want it to you could still bring it back and get the money. (no idea if it's possible in the usa)

[daver]

im at school and too lazy to log in, so here goes:

i've a battery extender and it charges my clie from around 10% to 80%. it doesn't charge the full battery, but it's enough to get me through a whole day of wifi usage. however, i suggest using non-rechargable batteries, as the rechargable ones never last long. i would recommend using the extender as a second battery, similar to the external battery for the UX series

[chee]

what about NiCd.. will they have the same problem?

[chee]

and what do you mean by "internal battery" - the extender uses the cells to charge the Palm internal battery

[pun]

Yes i agree
Theoretically , rechargeable batteries will have trouble charging the clie battery , though , clie should work fine with external battery extender .
But i believe the external extender should come with instructions / details of all this

[Valwit]

NiCd are older then NiMH and have a much much bigger memory effect problem. They can give a bigger current as NiMH but the same voltage so the problem is the same. The only solution is to build some electronic that will elimnate the problem, but if you'd be able to do it, you wouldn't ask ;)

[chee]

I received the extender, no manual, pretty local stuff but works with both kind of batteries.