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[X181 <uwerner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

*** This bug is a duplicate of bug 135548 ***
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/135548

Ubuntu 11.10

The power-settings-ui is unusable. i miss also a lot of options. As an
example: no action on critical low battery is not configurable. This
option is very important to users with a broken battery. gconf-editor is
not a solution for daily things.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/186390

Title:
  gnome-power-manager's handling of "critically low" battery power could
  be more user-friendly

Status in Gnome Powermanager:
  Invalid
Status in “gnome-power-manager” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

  I'm running Gutsy.  The version of the gnome-power-manager on my
  system is:

  2.20.0-0ubuntu6

  I think gnome-power-manager is behaving as intended but I think the
  intended design is not user friendly.  Here is what caused me to
  submit this bug:

  1. The power meter in the notification area had turned orange for a
  while.  The last time I hovered over the meter before my computer shut
  down, the meter told me that the battery power would be exhausted in
  20 minutes.

  2. A few seconds after my last power check, without any further
  warning or any way to prevent this, the laptop shut down.  Note that I
  did not launch any kind of intensive power-consuming task between my
  last power check and the time the computer shut down.  I understand
  that if I had done something which suddenly consumed more power, the
  previous 20min estimate would suddenly become incorrect and could
  perhaps cause the power manager to suddenly consider the battery level
  to be critical.  But no such thing happened.

  I checked my power settings and I think the computer behaved according
  to the settings I have set but there are several problems with the way
  gnome-power-manager behaves.  I'm going to list those problems here:

  1.  There is no indication of what "critically low" battery power
  means.  Is it a percentage?  Is it in minutes?  I checked the help and
  found no information there.  (I searched for "critically low" in the
  entire Gnome documentation.)

  2.  What "critically low" means is probably dependent on the specific
  hardware being used and probably should be configurable by the user.
  My computer shut down while there were 20 minutes of power remaining.
  That's not "critically low" as far as I'm concerned.

  3.  There is dissonance between what the power meter in the
  notification area is reporting and the behavior a normal user would
  expect.  If the power meter says there are 20 minutes of power
  remaining and does not say anything else, then the user is going to
  expect to be able to *work* for another 20 minutes.  But that's not
  what happens.  The time reported by the power meter means "you have X
  minutes of power remaining IF AND ONLY IF you have configured your
  power management settings to do nothing if the level goes critical".
  The reality is that if the user has configured the power manager to
  shut down the computer if levels go critical, then there's is less
  *working* time than what the meter reports.

  But I submit that a normal user is interested not in theoretical
  values but in how much *actual* time they have before "something
  drastic" happens.  If the user has configured their system to do
  nothing if the power level becomes critical then this "something
  drastic" is the time at which there is no power remaining in the
  battery.   However, if the user has configured the power management to
  either shutdown, sleep or hibernate when the power level is critical
  this "something drastic" is the time at which the machine will be
  forcibly shutdown, put to sleep or put into hibernation by the power
  management system.

  I think the way to fix this would be to have the meter continue to
  report how much power the battery has *in total* but also determine
  what event the user would really care about and inform the user about
  when that event is likely to happen.   For instance, the power meter
  could say the following:

  "The battery has 30 minutes of power remaining (10%).
  Based on your power management settings and current consumption, the computer will be shutdown/put to sleep/put into hibernation in 10 minutes."

  4. There is absolutely no warning that the power management system is
  just about to take action.   You're working and then poof, the
  computer shuts down.  Yes, the power meter becomes orange but it can
  be orange for 30 minutes before anything happens.  This indication is
  not focused enough.  It would be preferable if about one minute before
  taking action, the power management system would pop a dialog saying
  "This computer will be shutdown (or whatever the user chose) in 60
  seconds.  Click "Cancel" to continue using the computer until the
  power runs out."  The "60 seconds" figure could be a live countdown
  rather than static.  The user would then be able to configure power
  management to take care of the general case scenarios but would also
  be able to adapt to specific scenarios.  The idea is yeah, in general
  I want my computer to go to sleep if it is about to run out of power
  and I'm not there to do something about it but if I'm about to finish
  a presentation and my power is running low, I'd rather cancel the
  default action and finish my presentation.  If I'm concerned that I'll
  run out of power before I'm finished, I can take action.

  All of what I'm pointing out and suggesting here is obviously subject
  to discussion and refinement.

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