Toshiba F40..Optimal settings for Battery longevity?..other concerns.

[cpnfantstk]

I am enjoying my Rockboxed Gigabeat and first like to give thanks to those involved in its development. After using it for a week I have come up with a series of questions that I have no clear answers on it.

1) What are the optimal settings for battery life? ( Does Disk Cache ON have any bearing on battery life?)
2) Is the database feature necessary ? I really don't understand  that feature.
3) I do have some WMA files mixed with my mp3s. I know that there is no support and get the NO FILE message but when I access one of them and then try to play my regular MP3s, the  player does not play the selection. I have to go back to FILE and try again.

Just to note that most of my files are MP3 VBR and I do moderate browsing if that helps in determining the optimal settings. Please excuse if any of these questions have been asked. I could not find doing a search. ( I have the latest build and bootloader)

[Llorean]

1) Disk Cache on increases battery life if you browse a lot, and decreases it if you rarely / ever enter the filetree (someone who uses long playlists, and doesn't browse the filetree to change what's playing often).

2) Database is only used for the Database view, basically browsing your music by artist, album, genre, or otherwise instead of using the filetree.

3) Then don't try to play your WMA files. It does sound like you're describing buggy behaviour though, but I'm not sure the exact steps you're going through.

[cpnfantstk]

Thanks for the quick response. Whats a realistic expectation with moderate browsing?  These battery bench tests are giving well over 15 hours. I think thats with little or no browsing.

[Llorean]

The battery bench results should be with no browsing at all, pure playback time.

The only way to properly estimate is for you to try using your player and see. Rockbox seems to get a bit more out of the battery than the original firmware, so you can guess off that, but since I can't know your battery condition, what you mean by "moderate browsing", nor have any data from other browsing users to compare, I can't really say more.

[cpnfantstk]

What I mean by moderate browsing is listening to a few songs in one album and maybe a couple on another and so on.  I will do as you suggest but I don't think I will reach nearly 15. Maybe 10 hrs with the way I browse through my songs and play them.