OK, I know this is completely crazy, but ...... well, i don't care how it looks like, i only care of how it works.
I fed up with battery ending in the middle of the movie watching or when you have to do something important with your palm.
It often occures to me that i spend some time in the places where i can't recharge my palm so i need it running at lest some 10-15 hours on full power without battery recharge. First, i made a portable charger with auxiliary battery. Actually, i converted a Zire's cradle to a charger. So whenever i need to recharge on the road - i just take the cradle with battery. This is how it looks like:
I't a good solution , but it's not comfortable enough for me - you have to carry 2 additional item with you all the time.
So i decided to just "install" a larger battery into the zire itself.
So i opened my zire71 and replace a built-in li-ion battery with 4AA 2100mah rechargables,
As a result, unit works about 4-5 times longer, look at the last screen shot. It was about 25 hours in ON since last charge, and it's still holding. Byt the way, since that mod i ouly use 100% brightness. And I finally can watch a pack of good movies without worrying about a battery:-)
here's the process:
This is how unit finally looks,
Not so scary, isn't it? Actually it looks normal only from one side now. I can live withat that it is little bit havier and 0.5cm more tall.
Here's how it looks in the real life:
.
.
.Well, what do you say, folks?
Here's a BatteryGraph status screenshot from BatteryGraph program. You can see that it's been charged 9 day before, and since thatn it was almost 27 Hour ON !!!! And it's still holding.
<for other hardware stuff go to:
http://cgi.hand2hand5.plus.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=7
Make your zire work 4 times longer - 20hrs+ 
Linear Mode
