[CentOS] Battery condition tools CentOS/Dell

Thu Aug 6 02:08:49 UTC 2009
Ron Blizzard <rb4centos at gmail.com>

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Kwan Lowe<kwan.lowe at 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.

-- 
RonB -- Using CentOS 5.3