You wrote about extremely short battery life. I'm using batteries purchased at Costco, not name brand, but the Costco store brand. I'm primarily reading MP3 books I've digitized at 24 KBPS. I'm getting about 45 hours of battery life consistently under that circumstance. If I switch to dollar store batteries, I get the results you've described or something a lot like them. I rarely get less than 45 hours per set of batteries, and while I toss several braille books into the mix during the life of those batteries, most of my reading is definitely the MP3 audio. The moral of the story is watch out for those nasty dollar store batteries. They may even be name brand, but they're likely in that dollar store for a reason, not the least of which is that they may have become close to outdated. Please don't misinterpret this message; I'm not lecturing or castigating you at all. In fact, quite the opposite. I've been where you are in terms of that four-hour battery life, but not with this version--with earlier beta versions. These Costco batteries seem to last as long for me as the name brands, and I'm getting a twelve pack of four batteries per pack for between $10 and $11.