Yes, I realize it uses very little power but I am trying to eke out every mAh that I can. When I am on a long trip, I will not be able to recharge every day. I carry multiple batteries to help compensate but that is not enough.
Following your link to another
MSDN blog, I find the following info:
"Power Manager uses a concept called "System Power States" to do exert its control. The concept is pretty simple. PM has a list of drivers it controls, and, for each state, it has list of settings for those drivers. In one state, it turns everything on.
In another, it turns off the screen and backlight, but leaves everything else on.
UserIdle: There has been a longer period of user inactivity. Both the backlight and LCD have been turned off. When you set the screen timeout value on a Smartphone control panel, you're setting how long the system should wait before going into this state. This state is generally not used on PocketPC. There's no reason to turn the screen off when the device is about to go to sleep (sleeping turns the screen off). However, if/when PocketPCs go to the "Always On" model, they'll start using this state.
ScreenOff: You go into this state when someone specifically says to turn the screen (and backlight) off. For instance, in Media Player you can assign a button to turn the screen off. When you press it, we go into this state. This state is different than UserIdle, though. This state says, "The user wants the screen off and doesn't want it to turn back on." UserIdle says, "The user hasn't touched any buttons in a while, so we might as well turn the screen off to save power." In ScreenOff, pressing a button (other than the power button) doesn't turn the screen back on. In UserIdle, pressing a button does turn the screen back on. Both PocketPC and Smartphone use this state."
There may be a method of triggering the ScreenOff state, but there is no mention of how to do this (other than the comment about media player).