On 20-Dec-07, at 2:17 PM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>> Again, I suggest you actually look at powerd and pmf. You get ample
>> warning before we force a shutdown, plenty of time to notify yourself
>> before it reaches critical state.
>
> I have looked at powerd and parts of pmf.
>>

The problem with what you are suggesting is that depending on the age  
and condition of the battery, 5 minutes of runtime (or even 5 minutes  
of suspend time) may be too long. I have an older Powerbook that is on  
its second battery, where when it reports critical battery I only have  
about 20 seconds if I cancel the shutdown.

Going forward, what we want to do on a critical battery condition is  
to suspend to disk, but we're not there yet.

Jared