[TriLUG] Thinkpad Battery Charging Thresholds

[Joel James Adamson]

Hello Triluggers,

Sorry if this is too far off-topic, but I've found better laptop advice
on this list than anywhere else.  I recently bought a Lenovo Thinkpad
X100e[1], with a Lithium-ion battery.  I know that optimally the battery
should be between 30 % and 80 % of full charge, so I've tried a number
of methods.  I did try installing tp_smapi[2], but it didn't seem to
work, and I have not been using it.  I'm running Fedora 14 with the
2.6.35 kernel.

After a while of just unplugging when I got near 80 %, the battery
remarkably stopped charging by itself.  I mean that I could plug it in
and if it were below 30 %, it would charge up to near 80 % (79.7 % IIRC)
and stop charging.  Also, if it was above 30 %, I could plug it in and
it wouldn't charge at all, but then if it dipped below 30 %, it would
charge as described above.  Problem solved, right?

However, two weeks or so ago, I accidentally drained the battery, and
since then the old charging behavior (i.e. no charging thresholds) has
returned.

1. What did I do to get the desired behavior in the first place?

2. How can I get it back?

3. Is there anything else I can do?

Just to save you some time, this is *not* a dual-boot machine; I know
that Windows has features that will control this, or can get to it
through Thinkvantage in Windows.

Thanks,

Joel

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://trashbird1240.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/fedora-14-on-lenovo-thinkpad-x100e-with-athlon-neo-mv-40/

[2]  http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Tp_smapi

-- 
Joel J. Adamson
Servedio Lab
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

FSF Member #8164
http://www.unc.edu/~adamsonj
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 229 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.trilug.org/pipermail/trilug/attachments/20110215/971f8bab/attachment.pgp>