According to John Kohl:
>
>However, my experience has been that battery percentage reporting is
>dodgy (I have some different battery packs report the same lifetime as
>different percentages), so I'd be leery of depending on such things.
>

Ahhh ditto on that one.  I have a toshiba laptop (2400CT) and the
battery time can vary wildly even with the same battery but FWIW the
%age capacity seems fairly close to right (in my case).  One oddity I
have observed is that if I pull the battery out when the power is on
and then put the battery back in (non-maskable interrupt ;-) then the
apm bios denies there is any battery until the battery is fully
charged :-/

>If you really care, use a battery monitor program (e.g. I have an
>ancient xbattery meter written in XForms which still works).
>

I have a less ancient x-battery meter written in pure Xlib which gives
a bargraph & time estimate & allows you to sleep the machine.

-- 
Brett Lymn, Computer Systems Administrator, British Aerospace Australia
===============================================================================
  And the monks would cry unto them, "Keep the bloody noise down!"
  - Mort, Terry Pratchett.