ACPI Power Management driver question

[Marin85]

Hi folks,
I´m about to reinstall Vista very soon, so I was wondering if the Lenovo ACPI Power Management driver is essential for the ThinkPad. I intend to replace Lenovo Power Manager by Vista native power management support or NHC. What else is the ACPI driver responsible for? Thanks in advance!

Marin

[mgo]

Hi folks,
I´m about to reinstall Vista very soon, so I was wondering if the Lenovo ACPI Power Management driver is essential for the ThinkPad. I intend to replace Lenovo Power Manager by Vista native power management support or NHC. What else is the ACPI driver responsible for? Thanks in advance!

Marin

From what I have read, the ThinkPad power manager also allows better control of battery charging. It is suggested that the lower threshold be set to 90% rather than default. That will reduce the number of times the charging cycle is engaged. This saves wear and tear on the battery.

As far as the rest of it, Vista seems to do a pretty good job of power management.

[Marin85]

Hey,thanks for your reply, I have almost forgotten about that feature of PM, even though I use it in that very moment The only thing that bothers me concerning that specific feature is that if I plug the cable when the laptop is shut down and then reboot, it will start charging regardless of the settings in the Power Manager Battery Maintenanc:( So, if I want it to really comply to those settings, I always have to boot first and then plug in the cable. Not very convenient!

Marin

[Tõnis]

From what I have read, the ThinkPad power manager also allows better control of battery charging. It is suggested that the lower threshold be set to 90% rather than default. That will reduce the number of times the charging cycle is engaged. This saves wear and tear on the battery.

I have mine set to "Optimize for battery lifespan (automatically change for me)" with the "Notify me when thresholds change" box checked. Is that a suitable alternative to manually setting the threshold, or is manual the more reliable way to go? Also, it states that my battery's "design capacity" is 84.24WH and my "full charge capacity" is 84.16WH. Does this mean that my battery has lost 0.08WH from the date of manufacture?

TIA,

Tony

[jdhurst]

Lenovo has created a new UI for some tools (Access Connections and Power Manager being two). The GUI does not work well, at least not on a Vista 64-bit machine with Aero and Vista styles stripped out. I have opened a case as best I can at Lenovo and here in the Exchange conference. The very newest PM had some improvement, but both AC and PM are slow to start if you want to use the application interface.

If you are working normally, and not opening these tools, then they start well and work well in Vista. I have them both going and use both (I know you just asked about PM). ... JDH

[armani007]

i've found the new version of PM to be very buggy. the taskbar information rarely updates and is completely inaccurate. going into the application, the battery tab does show the correct info, but something is broken with the taskbar app.

i just update to 1.51 of the PM driver and i'm hoping that has some positive effect, otherwise i might as well turn it off since it's gone from very useful (and more accurate than vista's system tray utility) to very useless.

disappointing since i really love the features and the new UI is fantastic.

i hope a new version of PM fixes this if it hasn't already been addressed with the PM driver update.