How to control battery charging in Win 7 RC

[pae77]

I'm running W7 RC 7127 as my main OS on my T61p. It's so much better, faster, stable, etc., than Vista, I have no reason not to.

The only issue that's bothering me slightly is that Power Manager is quite flaky on Win 7. Actually it was quite flaky on Vista too.

The power management W7 provides is all I need, except for one thing and that is I don't see anywhere I can set the battery charging parameters, the way one can with TV Power Manager. So my question is, what will happen w respect to my battery charging if I uninstall power manager? And is there any way I can simply set the battery to start charging at say 50% and stop at 100% w/o power manager?

Thx.

[Xenomorph]

The Power Management software is as current as Late March 2009 / early April 2009. At least, that is what is available for my T43.

It works GREAT under Windows Vista and Windows 7, better than it does under XP.

Describe "flaky"....?

I use it to control my battery fine with Windows 7 exclusively.

[pae77]

What I mean by flaky is it doesn't always start up or open up when I click the icon (if the icon is even there), it sets it's own power settings at will that conflict with and override the W7 power settings I've set, and it's always 50/50 whether the tray icon even makes an appearance (it's set to be displayed). However, it does work to control the battery charging.

But I'm probably going to uninstall power manager because of the aforementioned issues and just let my battery do whatever it wants, until Lenovo releases a W7 version of power manager which hopefully should be soon.

[giorgosvam]

Without wanting to hijack the thread:.......

Admin edit: Content deleted.... you knew it was inappropriate but went ahead anyway

[giorgosvam]

When I wiped (via a fresh install) Power Manager from my T61, the battery was at 57%. Power Manager was previously set to start charging at below 40% and stop charging at 60%. Before re-installing Power Manager, I used the notebook in several short sessions on battery, in order to see what its charging behaviour is. It only started charging once it fell below 40%. Without being unplugged once it started, it went all the way through to 100% (not stopping at 60%).

It would have been interesting to see, whether it would have again fallen down to 40% before starting to recharge, but Power Manager has been installed on one of the two operating systems in the meantime (dual boot). Even so, it seems that somehow the lower threshold is stored either in the battery or the notebook, at least temporarily.

It would be great if there is a way to control the thresholds without Power Manager. None of its other features are essential to me, either. I hope someone knows how to.

George

(in hope of not having broken any rules this time)

[pae77]

I completely agree. Except for controlling the battery charging thresholds, power manager is totally redundant with the excellent power option control that is native to Win 7.

But unfortunately I still don't know of any other way to control the battery charging parameters and Lenovo has provided a more 7 compatible version of PM, so it s not interfering with the proper operation of power management in W7, (at least if one leaves it alone).