Happy Holidays: Heads-Up on Alarms and Battery Drain

[kishengiggs1]

Yes, as I understand it, your description will cause the problem. I'm not sure if it's related to a January event specifically or if it's simply an alarm reminder set for the year before the event is to take place. People noticed the problem because of January events, but I'm not up on the specifics of what exactly triggers this behavior.

[chicky_rox]

OK, I think I understand what causes the problem, and if I give myself a 1-week reminder on my son's January 2 birthday, I'm going to get hit. But I'm not clear on what "the problem" itself is. What will happen if I do that? Apparently, the earlier threads explained this, but they're no longer available.

By the way, thanks for the warning. This one's new to me.

[Madd-e]

I haven't had it happen for over a year, thanks to DT, but the problem was that the PDA kept turning itself on to remind me about it so that the batteries drained in the 16 or so hours I was out of hearing of the alarms one day. (I remember--but only vaguely--because I have a cousin with an early January birthday.)

[(xFilipinaBabeex]

I did some search and found many threads regarding this issue. I'm surprised I haven't noticed these threads before. Anyway, here are some links among those, one, two, three ,four, and more.

Throughout those posts, apparently, Dick Tracy is the one who has good knowledge for this issue and has a reminder to remind rabroad members to correct it every year. Thank you so much for your effort, Dick Tracy.

In summary, if you have any event within the first week of January, you should set the reminder between January 1 and the day of event, not December.

[marveldude10]

You're welcome ds2dys.

I started doing this reminder as I observed many threads popping up for the same seasonal issue.

Another tip, should you need the lead time, is to stick an Event on your Calendar (to order the birthday cake, mail the package, etc.) on the date the Alert normally would trigger. I have two early January birthdays and have set the reminders as repeating events occurring every year in that last week of December. I have also unselected Alarm for those particular birthdays.

Hope this helps.

[nickelbee500]

So DT, to remind you to post this every year, do you have an event on January 1 with an alarm set for two weeks early?

[rahul s]

No. I had intended to wait until Christmas eve (and there is no event or alarm anywhere in my electronic brain) then saw a post regarding spontaneous turn-ons, challenging my assumption that most people use the default settings.

[Pasqualo]

[i]

[Em a leeeee]

As best I can understand there is a bug or limitation in Alarms that is unable to span calendar years, triggering notification loop. Have not done extensive searching but suspect this is limited to devices with extended PIMs and may have relation to hooks to legacy PIMs. As I no longer have OS4 or prior models in-hand not able to test this theory. Wonder if CESD has a work-around in Datebk6.

Disclaimer: last time DT coded or debugged anything was pre-Zoomer.

[wileen c]

To my knowledge, DB6 ITSELF does not have this problem
BUT ... DB6 uses the same Calendar and Contacts databases, so the built-in Calendar and Contacts will still pick up this problem (last time this happened, TX was affected as well, just found back a post on the yahoo group indicating this).

I don't use Birthday from Contacts (use annual repeat in DB6, much more powerful), I do not use reminders on it either (I use DB6-advance floats, much more powerful and not affected by this bug )