Recalibrate battery?

[wizardfait]

I'm using Ubuntu 8.04, on a Compaq Armada M700 laptop, and the battery dies way before the power management meter says it will. It says I'm around 40-60% and my battery will actually be dead, and I've looked at the charge/discharge time accuracy profiles, and they're less than 10%... Yet I've let this thing drain and charge fully at least 5 times, with the laptop on. Is this normal? Or is there maybe a different approach to calibrating it that I'm not doing correctly?

[evets25]

Most likely, your battery is just old and dead. Batteries do tend to wear out, and they last a shorter and shorter time before needing to be recharged. On an aramada m700, the battery would be so old that you're lucky it has any charge at all left in it.

[wizardfait]

I very much understand that, but that doesn't mean that the OS shouldn't be able to realize that 20% = no power, and thusly, say it's at 0... I know at least windows does.. And I'd figure this would be a feature Ubuntu would also have. I know that Ubuntu is pretty good at stuff like this, for instance, on another laptop with an old/failing battery it realized that 0% really meant I had another 30 minutes, and fixed its self over time... But that was a very different laptop, and very different situation.