[FlameGrilled]

600maH is kinda low capacity - AA's dont come in anything much less than about 700mah these days.

Either :-

1) buy bulk packs of good alkaline cells, you can buy (in the UK) a pack of panasonic AA alkalinesx30 cells, for about £10.

or

2) Hunt down and order some good ni-mh cells (1800 mH or better) and a suitable charger

What you spend on the ni-mh cells, and charger, will repay itself greatly - trust me on this, i've hardly ever resorted to alkalines (only kept one or two on me for last-ditch emergency use).

3) If using Ogg for the compressed audio format, reconsider it..

Ogg decoding is literally a battery killer on the iFP, much as such on the iHP (but the iHp has better battery capacity) and not so much better on the iMP series.

If you are gonna work with Ogg, until either the excessive battery consumption problem is resolved, go with hi-capacity ni-mh cells and carry spares.

Observation
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If you were expecting walkman type battery life using an mp3 deck (40hours-80 hours per two AA's ala walkman, 20-40 hrs on a single cell source) - then i'd suggest you forget that little fantasy... :P

Mp3 units are massively power-hungry vs a walkman. The only really moderately good power-consumption decks are the CDP kind, as flash decks usually draw power off the internal cell during upload/downloading as well as during playback - and it's not exactly dragster run speed territory when it comes to transferring 256Mb of audio from PC to iFP-390 over USB 1.1

iHP's have an excuse for being 'in the middle' for running time - the HDD is a power hungry beastie, so it's the price you pay for days/weeks/months of continous shuffle-play capable content selection.

Energisers are simply part of the Every Ready range. I'd go with Duracells for alkalines, Panasonic alkalines second out of preference in alkaline terms - as i've picked up En's before to use on pocket instrumentation devices.. and i've yet to buy a pack of En's that weren't duff or in a bad state of charge.

At least, from experience (my walkman proved it) Duracells are a good example of getting what you pay for (the item packaged with the iFP was a duracell OEM supply item) - i use duracells in pocket instruments and panasonics (when i need to) for when i used an iFP (long gone now).

FG