For SL5 laptop users:

A number of things have changed with SL5.  One thing that is missing
from the current gnome-panel version 2.16.1 is battstat, the battery
notification applet.  I was a upset by this, until I found the
gnome-power-manager package, which is used in conjunction with
the "notification area" applet.  

gnome-power-manager keeps track of the battery, and also manages
power, shutdown, hibernate, etc.  A very handy tool for laptop
users.

To use this, make sure that gnome-power-manager is installed
( "yum list gnome-power-manager") and right click the panel to
"add to panel" the "notification area" applet.  In my case, it came
up with a power icon and (for some reason) an SCIM icon.  I went to
Menu->System->Preferences->More Preferences->SCIM Input Method Setup
to turn off the tray icon (click GTK to bring up the menu with the
button that disables the tray icon).  This maximizes the panel space
available for other things.

I went to Menu->System Tools->Configuration Editor and selected
apps->gnome-power-manager to do some tweaking.   I turned on 
"battery_event_when_closed" so the laptop suspends when the AC
adaptor is removed while the lid is closed.  I turned off 
"notify_ac_adapter" and "notify_fully_charged".  


I have my Thinkpad T30 laptop set up with ACPI.  I added a new section
to /boot/grub/grub.conf that is like the others, with "acpi=off"
removed, and set the default boot to that (If needed, at boot time I
can select the original section with "acpi=off" to load apm instead).

ACPI provides much richer information to gnome-power-manager;  look
at /proc/acpi/ for all the information provided - the file /proc/apm
provides only one line.  ACPI did not work well for my thinkpad with
kernels before 2.6.18, but works just fine now.

In any case, gnome-power-manager uses all that information to keep
obsessive amounts of information about the battery and the system
power usage and state, like graphs of charge history.  Just the thing
for obsessive information junkies like me.  I shouldn't be telling all
the empirical scientists reading this list - they may spend too much
time looking at the data and too little time doing real science, sigh.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          [log in to unmask]         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs