On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Kwan Lowekwan.lowe@gmail.com wrote:
Hello all: Does anyone know of a tool/project that will allow me to read the battery condition (not the charge status) on a Dell laptop battery? Under XP there is a utility that warns that the battery is still holding a charge but that the battery is degraded and should be replaced.
Also, not sure if this is possible, but I would like to control how the laptop charges the battery. I tend to have the laptop plugged in most of the time and this constant charging state is apparently very bad for battery lifetime. So a charge/drain cycle is supposedly better.
Do you show the Power Manager icon on your panel? On my Latitude D400, when I right-click on that icon, chose "Information" the first tab that comes up is "Device Information." If I open the "More" tab, it tells me all kinds of information about my battery, including "Capacity" -- which I think is what you're looking for? (Mine shows 87% with "Fair" in paranthethes.) It's possible that different batteries interact differently with the Power Manager, though.