[Jumping into the thread a bit late...]
On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 11:25:07AM -0500, David Z Maze wrote:
> Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> writes:
> > You may find that it goes from 40% to 1% in a matter of minutes as my
> > Thinkpads do when their battery's are over a year old.
>
> I've noticed my aging laptop (an 18-month-old Dell Latitude C600)
> doing something similar: on battery, the reported charge drops pretty
> steadily from 100% to 60% or so, then dives over the next few minutes
> to 8%. But it usually runs for about another 20 minutes once it gets
> there, hovering for 6-8 minutes at 4%.
Most likely ageing batteries. You may want to make sure that you have
upgraded your BIOS - I found that the factory-installed BIOS on my
Inspiron 4000 had a bug in it: (allegedly) it overcharged the batteries
and hence they didn't last as long as they should.
Since Dell was unwilling to supply me with replacement batteries, I
ended up getting non-dell batteries in protest, but that's another
story...
As a sidenote I once had the machine running for nearly half an hour on
0% charge (!) - after which I plugged it in. Just goes to show that
even performing a reliable measurement of battery charge isn't as simple
as it sounds...
> > To get accurate battery estimates you need to monitor the life of
> > the battery as it fully discharges. I think that the software on
> > some handheld devices does this, but APM on Linux doesn't.
<plug type=shameless>
Werner Heuser has already mentioned this:
http://karl.jorgensen.com/battery-stats
</plug>
--
Karl E. Jørgensen
karl@jorgensen.com http://karl.jorgensen.com JabberID: linux_geek@jabber.org
==== Today's fortune:
Grub first, then ethics.
-- Bertolt Brecht
Attachment:
pgp8Cot2oGVFh.pgp
Description: PGP signature