Public bug reported:
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.
** Affects: gnome-power-manager (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
--
gnome-power-manager's handling of "critically low" battery power could be more
user-friendly
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/186390
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