Power Manager ignores threshold settings

This almost always happens everytime I use my battery down to about 10%, it charges my battery to 100%. Threshold settings are 20% and 90% (sometimes 95%) on my T400 7417. I'm using the 90w power brick.

Any ideas? Thanks.

 

Try updating your power manager (both the driver and the application itself). Sometimes, it charges to 100% regardless of thresholds due to the program recalibrating, but I'm pretty sure it should not be charging to 100% each time, just every once in a while.

 

it happend twice these past few days.

i've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the power manager application and driver but still no luck. and the twice it happend i lost a fraction from the full charge capacity of my battery, used to be 85Wh+ (84.24Wh is the design capacity), now i'm down to 83.26Wh.

i'm thinking maybe its because i'm draining it down to about 7-10%. any possibility of this? i used to suspect its because of the 90W adapter that i got but now its still happening with my stock 65W one.

 

When I first got my T61P 2.5 years ago I was very much like you where I was PARANOID about losing capacity on my battery. I set charge thresholds of charge to 90% don't charge until it drops to 30-40%. I found that despite what the Power Manager reported, the actual capacity of the battery would drift by pretty good amounts over time since it wasn't actually being fully charged. In time I observed that the charge meter became very hit or miss if not doing a full charge. I would cringe when it would fully charge and the full charge capacity would drop another .10 Wh or something.

I quickly became tired of watching this happen all the time. Ever since then (2 years ago) I've set my battery to simply charge after it drops to 90%, and to charge fully. I stopped looking at the total capacity every day, or even every week and basically stopped being so paranoid about it. You know what..... my battery still lasts me 3.5 hours on my T61P. My charge capacity is just fine. If my battery dies tomorrow..... well, I'll just buy a new one.

I think I say this in about every one of these threads that comes up. It's just not worth the time or worry. It's a battery. Use it! Let it degrade! That's what they do! In a couple years if it's not meeting your needs, replace it. It's money well spent.

That's my 2 cents, I know many don't feel the same way and want to eek out every percentage point they can over the years. Just offering a different point of view on the matter!