xfce4-power-manager-1.0.1 and no battery options
 

I noticed that there is a 1.0.1 version of xfce4-power-manager, so I tried it out last night. Note: It requires libxfce4ui >= 4.7. I compiled it using the same SlackBuild script as the one in Slackware 13.1. It compiled and installed just fine. However, when I logged out of XFCE and logged back in, I could only set a few options, and battery options were completely non-existant.

I double-checked, and my user account in in the power group. Has anyone else had a similar problem? In the meantime, I've downgraded back to the 0.8.5 version that Slackware ships with.

That version requires stuff that isn't in 13.1 and may not be in the next Slackware release (that depends on whether xfce-4.8 is on the horizon any time soon). You'll need at least upower installed.

Robby, thanks for your help. I got upower installed from SlackBuilds.org. The upower team must have made some sort of change with their recent 0.9.6 version, which would not compile (not sure why yet). upower-0.9.5 with xfce4-power-manager-1.0.1 seems to have all of the options now.

Just out of curiosity, what other items did you think it might need to fully function?

If it's working fine, then probably nothing :)
Re upower, I think the newest release needs a newer glib2 version than 13.1 has.