Is There a Low Battery Warning? (G4 PowerBook 12�)

[bosdmeg]

Is there any kind of warning I can turn on so I get an alert when the battery on my PowerBook is about dead. Right now with out any kind of warning my power book just goes to sleep when the battery is dead. My old ibook running OS 9.2.3 would display an alert, warning me that the battery was low. Most likely there is an option somewhere to turn on such an alert, I just don’t know where.

[kc0arf]

Hello,

I am sure there is. My G3 Lombardi will tell me when the battery is getting low, and I know I can go to a control panel, and enable the battery gauges on the menubar.

Not having a G4 laptop, I do not know what custom settings are available. I would look in the System Preferences control panels under Energy Saver and see what you come up with.

Christian

[bosdmeg]

I have looked in every control panel I can find. Nothing it is annoying that I will be in the middle of something and the screen goes blank. GAME OVER

With my old iBook I would get a warning saying there is a few minutes of battery left. The new PowerBook just goes asleep.

[bosdmeg]

After some extensive research I have determined this problem is specific to my install. So I found a fix it is called SlimBatteryMonitor. Here is some info.

"Takes up to 70% less space than Apple's monitor.
Monitors laptop batteries and many UPS batteries as well.
Select different views for when powered, charging or on battery.
Monitor can hide itself automatically when desired."

SlimBatteryMonitor (Disk Image)

You can ask it to display a warning at 25%, 15%, and 10%. Take a look at the developer’s site.

developer’s site

Anyway,
Bosdmeg :cool:

[Kezz]

Thanks for posting your solution :)
I've been looking for something like that too

[windy_week]

Hi,
Thanks for posting your solution (I had the same problem on my 12" G4 running 10.2.8). Did you figure out why there was no warning?

After some extensive research I have determined this problem is specific to my install. So I found a fix it is called SlimBatteryMonitor. Here is some info.

"Takes up to 70% less space than Apple's monitor.
Monitors laptop batteries and many UPS batteries as well.
Select different views for when powered, charging or on battery.
Monitor can hide itself automatically when desired."

SlimBatteryMonitor (Disk Image)

You can ask it to display a warning at 25%, 15%, and 10%. Take a look at the developer’s site.

developer’s site

Anyway,
Bosdmeg :cool:

[bosdmeg]

I don't actually know why the Mac warning never showed, but I have a theory. The slimbattery monitor should popup when I have 25 minutes of battery remaining. It pops up when I have about 25 second remaining. The Mac has already gone to sleep before it’s warning can be displayed. I believe it is a hardware issue because both of the battery meters use the same raw data. As far as I know it is limited to the 12 G4 867 MHz PowerBook.