[Lancaster] Laptop Power Managment

[Ken Hough]

Is there anybody out there who is familiar with battery/power management 
on laptop PCs and in particular APM/ACPI?

I'm new to this. I've recently got an IBM Thinkpad T21 and am running 
SuSE v9.1. The SuSE Manual does cover APM and ACPI to some extent, but I 
would appreciate help on the following:

1. The pros, cons of APM and ACPI. I have run with APM and then with 
ACPI. Can do this by boot instructions 'apm=on/off' and 'acpi=on/off'. I 
get appropriate info and directories under /proc, so both seem to work.

2. The battery in the T21 is rated at 38800mWHr, but under acpi, 'cat 
/proc/battery/BAT0/state' always reports a full charge of only 
17600mWHr. It's not a new battery, but the fact it always reports 
exactly 17600 seems suspicious to me.

I will bring this laptop with me to the Folly tomorrow evening (ie 
Wednesday 30th June)


Ken Hough