laptop battery and... ubuntu?

[Alfred]

Hi I'm not perfect at this, but you should charge, and trickle charge
that battery for a day or so, to bring it up to 100%, of Charge. With
Nicads, charging at 77 to 80 %, can harm the battery, as these Batteries
have memory issues. With L-ion, starting with a full charge, would be
good! With NiMH start with a Full Charge, these batteries have pretty
good regulation curves, only when they are fully charged first. 

I'm not fully sure about, about the software, but it was made for all
Laptop Batteries, and so if Battery packs are different, then some will
read low, and others will read full, accounting for differences. Some
reading low, might be because the set point in the software, is high.
Some reading High, might be that the set point in the software is low
for that kind of Battery Pack.

Best to charge to Full the first time, and the charger usually has an
indicator telling you when this has happened, and then, use the software
sort of as a guide.

Alfred!

On Tue, 2007-30-10 at 22:44 -0700, helane wrote:
> i have laptop compaq presario v3000. just a couple of weeks ago i 
> switched to new ubuntu, and then last week my battery started showing as 
> "old/broken". it would charge but would not give me only about an hour 
> on it. i used the laptop extensively in the last year so thought it was 
> an old battery. i bought a new certified one - 12 cell, hoping it would 
> give me even more time than the last one. i plugged it in, it came 50% 
> charged showing 50 minutes. it charges fast... it went to 77% in 20 
> minutes but now shows again 55 minutes on 77%. the percentage seem to go 
> up the time does not as fast... now it went to 80% still showing 55 min. 
> on the old battery i used to get 2.5 hrs on the new one i was supposed 
> to ~5 hrs. not sure if something else is broken, or the linux shows 
> wrong time... any ideas? i really appreciate it. spend a lot of money on 
> a new battery... no happy about it.
> 
> thanks
> helane.
>