Hi,
After 3 years of using Ubuntu on my laptops, I noticed that after less than 1 year the battery capacity is only 50% of what it was when I first used it.
I use my laptop in a pretty standard way: it's connected as much as possible, with the laptop leaving the recharger every now and ten for a few hours (or a few minutes at times).
I have a Thinkpad Edge E320.
Now... the first odd thing is that I don't have the usual files in /proc:
# ls /proc/acpi
button event ibm wakeup
#
No battery or anything. OK...
I found this post that seems to suggest that the best way not to kill your battery is to only start recharging when it's more than 50% drained, and stop charging at 97%:
http://leadorg.wordpress.com/technol...-battery-life/
I saw this thread that seems to confirm that:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=546537
I remember reading on the Lenovo web site itself that for thinkpads their Windows driver has a special mode for laptops that are often attached to the recharger (such as mine). I cannot find it anywhere though -- sorry.
I already have tp_smapi, and can get to the battery information through smapi:
# /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0# cat last_full_capacity
28040
# /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0# cat design_capacity
62160
Gosh, worse than I thought.
So, questions:
* How come I don't have anything in /proc?
* What values shall I set, in start_charge_thresh and stop_charge_thresh, in order to keep my battery from dying?
* Is there a GUI somewhere where I can set these values and make them stick? (If not, OK no biggie
* Is there a way to "recover" this battery so that it goes back to something acceptable?
Any other info would be super-welcome.
Merc.
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