Thinkpads Forum

I'm using my T60 with the battery, something I don't do regularly. I noticed that the Power Manager Guage was missing from the taskbar, which bothered me since I'm used to using it. I hunted for the option to turn it on and found it. However, the % and estimated time usage disagrees substantially from that gotten by passing the mouse cursor over the vertical battery icon in the task bar. For instance right now the guage says 89%, 2:17 hours and the vertical icon says 83%, 2:34 hours. Why do these disagree?

I have found that the power manager gauge refreshes roughly 1 time per percent of battery (about every 3 minutes for me on my T61) while the windows icon in the notification area refreshes whenever you look at it. While on my system the normally disagree abou the time, they are normally withing 1% of each other - Right now I am getting ~3hrs left and 60% according to windows, and 2.5 and 61% according to power manage I think power manager may be more accurate to the overall life based on your current and past use, while the windows is your battery life right now. That still does not explain the precent diffrence. It may just be frozen . In vista and 7, the time remaining as read from the mobility center (win+x) is diffrent from either the taskbar or power manager. If I were you I would plan for the shortest time you have, and hope for the longer .