HP IPAQ Backlighting "Feature" Issue and Fix

With Paul Remde's assistance I just fixed an issue with a "problem" I
had with my HP IPAQ 2215 (2210). You might want to know about this.

My problem was that the unit would not power on when using battery
power. On AC (or cradle) it was OK. I thought it was a battery
issue. I thought that the power connector was bad. A soft reset
didn't help. Everything was working fine last week and I hadn't
changed anything (really!). And it was happening during a contest.
As you can imagine, this was VERY frustrating.

What was really happening was that backlighting had been turned off
for battery power. In most lighting conditions you cannot see the
2215's display at all when backlighting is off. But how did
backlighting get turned off all of a sudden?

Paul to the rescue. An undocumented "feature" of the IPAQ is that if
you hold the power button for 2 seconds, it will toggle the backlight
from the default state (usually full on) to full off. Somehow I guess
I had inadvertantly done this. So at this point it appeared that when
plugging and unplugging AC power, the unit was powering up/down. This
setting is *NOT* affected by a soft reset and is *NOT* mentioned in
the manual.

The solution is to either; 1) holding the power button again and 2)
going to Start Settings System Backlight Brightness. The real
trick is knowing about this undocumented "feature" in the first place.

Thanks again to Paul.

- John "Backlight" DeRosa