Laptop battery consumption

[Dotan Cohen]

2010/1/21  <mdovell at comcast.net>:
> One thing I like on Ubuntu is it gives me more specific information on my
> laptop battery. Unfortutatly it is now down to 66%-75% range in terms of
> power. Is there any way to recalibrate batteries in terms of making them
> perform longer? I've heard some suggest you have it running with very little
> and drain it and then recharge..does this sound right?
>

Lithium Ion batteries have an internal "fuel gauge" that must be
periodically reset, as their voltage is almost constant for the entire
charge range. Let your battery run down until it dies (make sure you
are on a journaling file system, or boot into memtest to do this).
Then charge it with the machine powered down. This will reset the
"fuel gauge" which will give you a more accurate estimate of battery
time remaining.

You cannot make a Li-Ion batter perform longer, but with a calibrated
fuel gauge the OS itself can adjust to various battery conditions. You
might also want to look at PowerTOP:
http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il