[Tfug] Laptop battery charging time

[Claude Rubinson]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2007 at 09:37:16PM -0700, Jude Nelson wrote:
> Claude,
> 
> Is this one of those "smart" batteries, that have a built-in sensor on
> them?  If so, the kernel has a config option for that, which will get
> better readings than the usual ACPI daemon.

Don't rightly know.  But I don't seem to recall anybody talking about
that during my many travels through the Linux Thinkpad blogoverse, so
I suspect not.  I'll need to check into that, though.

> Otherwise, the ACPI daemon on your system may be checking the battery
> charge in too short/long intervals:  too short, and the calculation
> sample size is too small for any meaningful output; too long, and the
> calculation is inaccurate due to too general sampling.  I'm pretty
> sure there's a way to change the interval, but I'm not sure how it
> could be done.  If it exists, it's probably some obscure option in
> /etc/sysctl.conf.

That's an interesting idea.  I wonder if that might also explain why
the lifetime of my other battery seems to have plummeted ever since I
switched over to acpi from apm?  I was just assuming that it was (a)
higher power usage under acpi, (b) the battery was dying, or (c) some
combination of both.

I'll try to look into this idea and get back to y'all.

Thanks,

Claude

And, of course, just because my computer has a cruel sense of humor:
when I started this email there were over 5 minutes of charge time
till completion.  Now, acpi is reporting that the battery is fully
charged.  Hrmph!

Could it be related to the fact that the battery had been sitting
around for a few months without use?