[holmes4]

The standard Mini 9 battery lasts for about three hours, less if being asked to do things such as play a video. An external DVD drive will definitely shorten the battery life. You may want to consider copying the DVD to an SD card and playing from that - this will consume much less power than using a DVD.

[Longhaultraveller]

Originally Posted by holmes4

The standard Mini 9 battery lasts for about three hours, less if being asked to do things such as play a video. An external DVD drive will definitely shorten the battery life. You may want to consider copying the DVD to an SD card and playing from that - this will consume much less power than using a DVD.

Thanks for that! Excuse the ignorance but what is a SD card?

[rrfranczak3]

.

Originally Posted by Longhaultraveller

Excuse the ignorance but what is a SD card?

an SD card is a Secure Digital Card (SD for short), its a flash memory card similar to the type used in digital cameras,cell phones,Palm Pilots,some GPS devices and other devices


they are used to store or transfer data from 1 place to another, they come in various sizes ranging now a days from about 2 or 4gb up to about 32 or 64gb and are priced accordingly, for example an 8gb card can usually be picked up for $25 if you catch a deal, there are many different brands also such as Sandisk,Transcend,PNY...etc


PS. just a side note: I remember years ago I picked up my 1st SD card for my Palm Pilot and it was a 32mb not gb but mb and I paid about $75 now you can get a 8gb for $25...strange how technology advances huh?

Just to further confuse you.... the larger cards from 4gb and up are usually considered SDHC cards which is Secure Digital High Capacity card and some older devices may not be able to read SDHC cards only SD cards, but all the Minis I believe will read up to 32gb SDHC cards

NOTE: in regards to a movie, a standard movie in .avi format is usually about 700-750mb, if converted to a DVD/divx format will be anywhere from 1.4gb up to maybe 3gb and blu-ray movies are usually even larger at about 6gb..so with a 4gb card (about $15 on sale) you could hold about 5 movies (in .avi format) which is playable on your Mini with VLC player, Windows Media Player and others

[holmes4]

SD = SecureDigital - a small flash memory card that fits into a slot on the left side of the Mini 9. Capacities up to 32GB are available, but 8 and 16GB are much cheaper.

Note that you'll need special software to copy a commercial DVD to the card. Someone else will have to make suggestions there.