I’m getting poor battery life, maybe 6 hours of active reading time. This seems to be more or less average: people are reporting anything from three or four hours to ten or eleven hours between charges. Mind you, that is with an 8 GB CF card plugged in, which draws at least a little bit of power.

As for what is eating the power…well, they are doing absolutely no power management in the iLiad at this point. It runs the processor and memory at full tilt. The only thing it turns off is the wireless network interface when it’s not in use.

Currently, I don’t find the battery life to be a constraint. I read for a few hours and plug the iLiad in. However, I would prefer not to *have* to plug the device in. Supposedly they are working on power management features for an upcoming release of the firmware: the expectation is that they will be able to triple the battery life. Unfortunately, there isn’t a date for that yet.

Update: iRex has backed off from any significant battery life improvement coming from firmware upgrades. Apparently the power management problem isn’t going to be solved without significant hardware changes. They are, however, offering an optional “free” battery upgrade later this year to current owners that they claim will increase battery life by about 30%…