[ltp] [ANN] tp_smapi 0.19 adds dates, improves stability

[David A. Desrosiers]

> The first cycle may have recalibrated the the battery controller's 
> estimate of capacity, but are you sure the subsequent cycles also 
> made an improvement?

         I should note that there is a critical feature of the T42p 
that tp_smapi _does not_ support, and its causing my laptop to kill 
batteries, I suspect. There is no support for the stop_charge_thresh 
for the T42p, so the system just drains to 0%, then recharges to 100% 
and back again, whenever I'm exhausting battery capacity.

         Another odd problem (which may or may not be related), is that 
when the 9-cell battery dies, and the laptop powers off with no juice 
left, the entire CMOS is wiped, and I have to go back in a reset 
everything (date, time, power management, disable floppy, and so on).

         With _nothing_ loaded, screen at its dimmest value, no usb, no 
wireless, no bluetooth, CPU at 600Mhz, the mW consumption is about 
15mWh to 17mWh. I can't seem to get it any lower, unless I disable the 
LCD altogether, or take out the only hard drive in the machine.

         Its pretty depressing that a modern laptop can't even get 2 
hours of battery life on the biggest, baddest battery made for it.

         I've been shopping for one of those universal laptop batteries 
like the one APC sells, which feeds 80W to 130W of power to the laptop 
(and other chargeable devices).


David A. Desrosiers
desrod@gnu-designs.com
http://gnu-designs.com