[gpm] battery charging profile ala Thinkpad Thinkvantage software

[Andrew Henry <adhenry 9 gmail com>]

I've been reading up on battery charging on the battery university website ( http://batteryuniversity.com/ ) and read that to prolong the life of a battery you should stop it from charging to 100% all the time when the power cable is connected, and to only start charging again when it drops below a certain threshold e.g. 40%.

Is this supported via gnome-power-manager?  If so, how do you set the control?  I cannot see any options in the GUI but maybe it can be controlled via the terminal?

I have a Thinkpad T61 at work and this is easily configurable in ThinkVantage so that battery stops charging at 98% and only starts to charge again when battery drops under 40%, when the power cable is connected.

I have a Thinkpad Edge at home with Ubuntu 10.04 and the battery just gets charged up to 100% as soon as I plug in the cable.

If this is not supported within gnome-power-manager, would it be possible to implement it?

I have been using this profile for 2 years and my laptop battery is in much better shape than my 4 colleagues who have identical laptops and have not used this technique.

Regards,
Andrew