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Battery Low Warnings
The battery low warnings are set using the Windows
Power Management Properties
application. See later in this chapter for a full discussion of this topic.
The
Power Management Properties
application lets you set a Low Battery Alarm
and a Critical Battery Alarm. The alarms are triggered when battery charge decreases
to a user-defined percentage set in the
Power Management Properties
application.
We recommend that you set the Low Battery alarm to about 10% and the critical
battery alarm to about 3-5%. The battery charge percentages are not extremely
accurate and the power consumption of different applications are not identical, so it’s
important to allow for a margin of error. The primary aim is to save your data before
the system shuts down when the battery is fully discharged.
Responding to a Low-battery Condition
Following the battery low alarms that you have set, we recommend that you save
your work and shut down your computer when there is about 5% of battery charge
remaining. In this condition, you can be confident that you have enough power to
power the hard disk drive or floppy disk drive and save even the longest of files.
After you have shut down your computer in a low battery condition, don’t try to
restart the computer until you have replaced the discharged battery with a charged
battery pack, or connected the computer to a power outlet using the AC adapter.