The soft pads keep the battery pack case from sliding around inside the Newton. Here’s what the empty battery tray looks like inside the eMate. The actually battery pack fits snugly inside the holster, but slides right out. Be careful, and use something (I used my fingernail) to wedge the connector away from the plug-in.įrom here, pull the battery pack out of the eMate. This is the most delicate of the steps: pulling the battery connection cable away from the circuit board. The battery pack isn’t bolted to the eMate it simply rests in a little trench, with a wire attached to the circuit board. Now you see the good stuff: a few memory slots and the battery. I left the screws in their slots as I lifted the cover off so I wouldn’t lose them. There are just two screws to remove on the cover, and they’re both at the top. See that half-circle hatch near the handle (above)? That’s what you’re taking off. The first step is to flip your eMate over. To start, I grabbed a new eMate battery pack from PowerBook Guy, a Torx wrench (I actually took my eMate into the hardware store to get the perfect-sized wrench), my eMate, and some starting instructions from Frank. I opted for the simplest solution: buy a new battery pack on eBay and installing it myself. If it goes, you’re stuck with replacing it, building a new one from scratch, or keeping your eMate plugged in at all times. So while it’s handy to pop a few fresh AA batteries into a MessagePad and be back up and running, the eMate relies on its single battery pack. It held a charge for about three minutes. When my eMate came, I found out right away that the battery pack was probably the original. And the battery life is great if you have a working, rechargeable battery with plenty of juice. Small, portable, rugged – a sort of proto-netbook that lets you type on the go.

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