In news:4be43edc$0$2531$4b86bf46@news.surffi.net,
jh typed on Fri, 07 May 2010 19:24:43 +0300:
> Hello
>
> I have a HP 530 laptop, to which i got a new battery.
> The old was a 2000mAh HP-original but this new is a 4600mAh battery.
>
> Im using ubuntu and when I look at /proc/acpi/battery/../info
> it tells me i still have 2000mAh battery. Updatin bios didnt help.
>
> Anyone ever heard of any such thing ? HP-support could not help
>
> Jarkko
Hello Jarkko! This new battery, is it manufactured by HP or some clone?
Or was this an original and the internal batteries have been replaced?
The reason why I ask is because as far as I know, laptops have no idea
what the capacity of a battery is. The only way a laptop could figure it
out is by calibrating. There are different methods of doing this. But
they all test the battery while fully charged and test how long they run
before the battery is depleted (using different methods). So it learns
from the battery you are using and they generally work pretty well.
Problem comes in when you also have more than one battery. Now the
calibration is all off. As the capacity of the battery is most likely
different (even if the capacity of two batteries are supposed to be the
same). Battery manufactures came up with a solution to this problem by
having a chip inside to report details on the battery. One of them is a
serial number of the battery. So the laptop knows this isn't the same
battery as before. Thus the laptop needs to use a different calibration
for this other battery.
So Ubuntu is reading information from this chip. And the information
sounds like it is a clone of the information from the original battery.
Thus it reports the capacity is the same as the old one. And that
wouldn't surprise me, since a lot of battery manufactures don't always
put very accurate information into the chip. Especially clone
manufactures. So I would depend on the laptop's ability to calibrate the
battery instead of using the information that the battery supplies.
--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows XP SP3
