Poor Zune battery life???

[Stevemo57]

Hi, is anyone else experiencing poor battery life in their Zune? On a full
charge mine only lasts about 2 1/2 - 3 hours if that. And that's only playing
music.

 

[CyberTaz]

Sorry, but you've landed in the MS Office for Mac newsgroup... May be a few
with iPods, but I don't know anyone with a Zune You might try here:

http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...69a-5b15-4bb0-a772-f459abd462b1&lang=en&cr=US

 

[Randall Ainsworth]

Hi, is anyone else experiencing poor battery life in their Zune? On a full
charge mine only lasts about 2 1/2 - 3 hours if that. And that's only playing
music.

The only Zunes I've seen have been in a locked case in Wal-Mart. I've
yet to see one in the wild. I notice that some of the large retailers
are starting to apply healthy discount to them. But as per your title,
the word "poor" and Zune definitely belong in the same sentence.

 

[John McGhie]

Only the people who bought one

--

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs

+61 4 1209 1410, <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]

 

[John McGhie]

Actually, I shouldn't be so flippant

Battery life in a Zune should be around 16 hours, depending upon whether:

* You leave the display turned on
* You leave the WiFi turned on
* You turn the volume up full
* You properly conditioned the battery before using the player.

That last one is the most important. There are instructions packed with any
device that has a rechargeable battery specifying how long you must charge
it for before attempting to use the device. Usually it's at least 12 hours,
and sometimes 24. If you don't follow these instructions exactly, you set a
"ceiling" on how much charge the battery can accept, and it will never go
any better than that for the life of the battery.

You can attempt to recover from this by "Reconditioning" the battery:

1 Turn the player on, leave the screen and WiFi on and
2 allow it to play in that condition until it switches itself off (do not
hurry this: you MUST wait for it to do it itself...)
3 Put it on charge and leave it overnight (at least 12 hours)
4 Repeat steps 1 to 3 two more times.

If you are lucky, this will restore the battery to close to full
performance. If you're not, or it doesn't, then you need a new battery!

Cheers


--

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs

+61 4 1209 1410, <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]

 

[Stevemo57]

Sorry.

Sorry, but you've landed in the MS Office for Mac newsgroup... May be a few
with iPods, but I don't know anyone with a Zune You might try here:

http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...69a-5b15-4bb0-a772-f459abd462b1&lang=en&cr=US

 

[Stevemo57]

Thanks John, I understand you being flippant, I'm hearing alot of that. Aside
from the battery issue, I like the Zune.

Display is off (after it times out, 15 sec.)

WiFi is off, should it be left on?

volume set to mid range or lower.(I'm not that young any more)

Charged overnight before first using. Should I charge it every night, dead
or not?

Thanks again,
Steve

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Steve:

If you charged it overnight before the first use, then you probably have a
faulty battery.

If you leave the WFi on, you substantially increase battery consumption. So
"No".

Once the battery has been properly initialised, it doesn't matter when you
charge it. I tend to let rechargeables run right down before recharging,
because the old rechargeables would recharge only about 500 times,
regardless of how empty they were when you did it. So I got the best bang
for my buck by not charging until they were empty. I suspect this is
nonsense these days, but I keep doing it

You can try the procedure I described for reconditioning the battery: it
sometimes works. But I think you have one or more cells out in that
battery, and a chat to your retailer is what is needed. As I said, you
should get 16 hours out of it.

Cheers

--

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs

+61 4 1209 1410, <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]