battery app using much cpu

[Warren Togami]

Shawn Houston wrote:
> Yes, I have apm=off acpi=on in my grub.conf boot line. I have all of the
> acpi modules loaded in order to get the acpi data in /proc/acpi, and I
> have acpid running to process events.
> 
> -Shawn

Known bug...
It seems that on some (dunno about all) machines, querying the battery 
info within /proc/acpi/something/something causes a small hiccup of CPU 
usage.  Earlier versions of ACPI caused nastier things to happen like 
PS/2 devices would die on my laptop, necessitating a reboot.  Now at 
least it doesn't crash, but you don't want to query the battery often.

I suspect Gnome's battery applet may be querying the battery info too 
often.  On my laptop with 2.4 or 2.6 kernel with ACPI enabled, Gnome's 
battery applet causes constant 15-20% CPU usage with two noticable 
hiccups per second where the mouse jumps because of loss of interactivity.

Some guy in IRC said he knew of a patch to fix that, but I don't 
remember the details.

Warren