okay, part of the problem is that i have a short in my power jack in the laptop and so to get power i have to "jiggle" the cord. but even before that happened i have had problem with the powermanagment icon in the systray. sometimes it will do what it is supposed to and tell me how much power i have left or that it is charging, blah, blah, blah. but a lot of the time it shows the battery and a blank meter even when the battery is full. and it will also show the plug and an empty meter. the tool tip also says 0% charged.

ps. sorry about the double post. i think it's cause of my touchpad problems. but that's another story.

um, what systray is this? kde? I think it gets it's info by catting /proc/apmud(I think? I forget exactly what it's called)

try catting that and seeing what you come up with

yeah, KDE. sorry. i didn't see anything like that file, but /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state gave me this info.

present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: charging
present rate: 0 mA
remaining capacity: 1840 mAh
present voltage: 16085 mV

is that where it comes from?