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It's not really the Gomadic. It's the USB port. USB ports are only required to provide 100 ma of power at 5 v. The Ax consumes about 200 ma of power (1440 mah total in the battery/ 7 hours battery life). So, when connected to a USB port that provides 100 ma, if the Ax is powered on, there could be a drain of 100 ma, causing the battery to slowly decline. The fact that the Ax is also designed for 5.5v just adds to the dilemma, as Gomadic has pointed out.
Two things can mitigate this dilemma:
1) Some USB ports can provide as much as 500 ma. There is no guarantee any particular port will do that, but the spec does say that the port may provide that much. Some hubs do that if they are separately powered, but you cannot guarantee that they will just because they are powered. In short, you would have to read the spec on the particular card/hub/pc/pc card/whatever that is providing the port to see how much power is being provided.
2) Turn off the Ax. That stops power consumption and allows the 100 ma to catch up on the battery. You could also turn the brightness completely off, which should drop the power consumption even further, but then you would have to have a bright light to see the screen and if you did any heavy work that burdened the battery the gain in charge rate would be minimal.
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