Suspend mode may be on its way back

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/c/a/News/BsquareTI-OMAP35x-EVM-BSP...

Can't wait to see a CE 6 R3 device with suspend mode.

Absolutely critical if you want to use any CE device as an ebook reader...I mean who wants to go back and have to refind the spot where they left off their reading...

Ehh, don't almost all ebook readers auto start with the last page read? All the linux ones do. I'm almost positive AlReader2 for CE does. I just don't read ebooks enough to remember if it does or not.

Cheers

True enough about the software, but the newer CE devices don't have suspend...they simply shut down, essentially performing a warm/hard reset in the process. So everything is, inlcuding where you left off in your ebook, wiped clean.

This is the problem I have with the current crop of CE 5/6 netbooks - if I'm writing something or taking notes and need to pause for thought or wait for the next notable piece of information, I have two choices: either let the device sit powered on the whole time, running down the battery, or save the document, power off, then later power on again and reopen the document, etc. After going through the latter during a two-day seminar the past weekend, I'm ready to go back to my older H/PCs for this purpose.

Not at all... both mobipocket and ubook remember their place even after a power down... at least they do on my CE6 minibook.

-Dana

Yeah, Mobipocket does remember its spot....but I still have to reload the program/ebook file to get there. I'm so lazy, and dependent on the old way things used to work that I don't want to have to go through those extra steps.

With my old hpcs, if I suspend, the thing turns off. When I turn it back on, I am right where I left off without having to reload Mobipocket.

The newer machines = Extra steps to do the same thing

True. uBook remembers the book and the location, and loads it at program start. Mobipocket puts settings in a file in the \windows directory which gets wiped at restart, so all settings, including the current book, get lost and you have to reopen it... but the page is stored in a different file in the ebook directory so at least that isn't lost.

Could always put a startup shortcut (that is possible in CE, isn't it?) to open the program at startup if that's all you use it for.

But I agree that a true suspend with instant on would be a major improvement to the current crop of devices. So would a backup battery, for when you do forget and let it drain down.

-Dana

I hope I never go back to backup batteries again....I'd much rather have persistent memory that doesn't care whether it has power or not.

So you're saying none of the CE5 or 6 devices support suspend at this point? But WM6.x does... Confusing :s I thought something like the JoinTech JE100 (a CE5 ebook reader IIRC) would need to suspend.

And yeah if they cannot suspend I'm sticking to CE4 at the moment

Not quite. At least one CE 5 tablet does (ViewSonic V212) - and Dana has claimed that his CE 6 netbook has actually suspended once or twice, though it sounds like it's a bit quirky about this.

Yeah I read more about the JoinTech JE100 (CE5 tablet) and apparently it has suspend mode and people love it (on mobileread.com).

So I guess it's not a matter of whether CE5/6 has suspend mode, but whether the device manufacturers implement it, right? Which makes this news about suspend mode being supported not as exciting, because that has never been the cause of the problem On the bright side I hope the manfacturers decide to include this feature because it's on this sample board


Edited by takwu 2010-05-29 9:09 PM

Well, I'm not clear if it's a true suspend... but there is a setting for idle time or some such (don't have it with me at the moment). After 5 minutes (the time I set) the screen goes blank, at least, and only the power light indicates it's not completely off. Pressing the power button wakes it up again, at the point where it was.

There's also a "suspend" program that I think came from RTFM's programs zipfile. This also does the same thing, most of the time. Occasionally it hangs up, or seems to... could just be it's taking longer to save open data and I'm impatient.

In this nide, the battery lasts a lot longer than when it's completely on (many hours at least), but not for days or weeks as my Jornada did.

I wouldn't mind a backup battery to simply keep the clock running when the main battery is dead. Everything else is in persistent memory, unlike the Jornada.

-Dana

OK, just looked at it. The "power" control panel applet has three times" user idle, system idle, and suspend. I've set these for 3, 4, and 5 minutes, respectively. There is a good description of the states here.

In another thread somebody mentioned that the power settings are grayed out on their machine. Presumably it's up to the developer whether to implement the functionality.

I guess it is a true suspend, according to the site I linked... but not like in an older device like my Jornada, where it really was shut down and consuming no power (and could stay that way for weeks) with the backup battery keeping RAM data from evaporating.

-Dana