[TriLUG] Thinkpad Battery Charging Thresholds

[John Brier]

On Feb 15, 2011 3:58 PM, "Joel James Adamson" <adamsonj at email.unc.edu>
wrote:
>
> 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
> I know that optimally the battery
> should be between 30 % and 80 % of full charge

Where did you hear this?

For my 3 year old Asus U3S which i beleive has a lithium ion battery i just
use it however my needs require. Most of the time its plugged in but when i
take it off AC it works fine, three years later.

> 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.

Almost sounds like "memory" that nickel cadium batteries used to have.

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
>