Battery appears to drain overnight

28 Dec 2008

The Archer Field PC may appear to fully drain the battery pack over night or weekend (when the unit is not attached to the wall charger or in the Power Dock) in the following conditions:

• The auto-suspend timers have been disabled. Check under Start > Settings > System tab > Power icon > Advanced tab.

   

• An application has been left running which prevents the system from automatically suspending, and the unit was manually suspended.

   

The Archer operating system release 2.1.4 and higher allows the system to complete the required resume at midnight (to perform daily system updates) and automatically suspend a few seconds later despite the above conditions, as noted in the

release notes document.

Leaving the Field PC in a suspended state (turning off by briefly pressing the Power Button) maintains RAM memory allowing the system to quickly resume to the last functioning state. This can be useful for maintaining battery power during brief inactive periods of a work day. But the battery pack drains slowly over time while suspended, causing a good, fully charged battery pack to be completely depleted in at least three or four days if left suspended without charging (especially if an external device is being powered by the Field PC).

For this reason, we recommend closing all running applications and leaving the Field PC attached to the wall charger or in the Power Dock every night and weekend to maintain full battery life for the beginning of each work day. If you are unable to charge the Field PC every night and weekend, we recommend that you fully power off the Field PC by pressing and holding the Power Button for 3-5 seconds and then select the Power Off item from the Power Button menu. If you will be storing the Field PC for an extended period of time, we recommend that you Power Off, remove the battery pack, and store the battery pack separately.