Abstract: A system may obtain data related to hearing instruments, such as data indicating answers of a user to a questionnaire or historical usage data of the hearing instruments. For each respective feature of one or more features, the system may determine a feature duty cycle corresponding to an amount of time during a period in which the respective feature is anticipated to be active based on the data related to the hearing instruments. The system may further determine an energy cost for the respective feature at least based on the respective feature duty cycle for the respective feature and a power consumption rate of the respective feature. The system may calculate a battery life of one or more batteries in the hearing instruments at least based on the energy costs for each feature of the one or more features.

Abstract: A system may obtain data related to hearing instruments, such as data indicating answers of a user to a questionnaire or historical usage data of the hearing instruments. For each respective feature of one or more features, the system may determine a feature duty cycle corresponding to an amount of time during a period in which the respective feature is anticipated to be active based on the data related to the hearing instruments. The system may further determine an energy cost for the respective feature at least based on the respective feature duty cycle for the respective feature and a power consumption rate of the respective feature. The system may calculate a battery life of one or more batteries in the hearing instruments at least based on the energy costs for each feature of the one or more features.

Abstract: The present invention may be regarded as a disk drive with protection against damage due to a thermal asperity. The disk drive comprises a disk having a surface with an asperity, and a magneto-resistive head actuated radially over the surface of the disk for generating a read signal comprising a thermal asperity component caused by the magneto-resistive head contacting the asperity on the surface of the disk. A bias generator is provided for generating an electrical bias applied to the magneto-resistive head, and a thermal asperity detector detects the thermal asperity component in the read signal. When the thermal asperity component is detected, the electrical bias is reduced for a time interval, thereby protecting the magneto-resistive head.