Hello all,

This is the same that happens to me. In particular:

When I switch on my computer using only the battery, the Battery monitor
on the tray is showing ALWAYS that the battery is fully charged.
However, making a simple click onto the monitor icon, it shows a popup
with the actual percentage of remaining battery. In this situation, if I
do not verify frequently the remaining power, the computer
just runs out of battery and halts abruptly. When restarting, I had
to fscheck the filesystems. This is very dangerous.

However, I found a "trick" while this issue is not successfully addressed. 
All this changes when I simply connect the PC
to the power (just less than a second) and the monitor changes:

* A popup shows that the the battery is discharging, as well as the remaining battery percentage and the time.
* The tray icon is showing that the battery is discharging.
* The popup information when click the icon remains the same than before.

In this situation, the battery monitor shows 2 alerts: the first one
some time before running out of battery (about 9% of battery) and the
second one when only 1-2% of battery remains. In both cases, the popup
alert shows correctly the percentage of battery, but do not show the
proper remaining time (just "unknown remaining time" or so). In
contrast, in this case, the computer switch off normally (as I have set
up in the settings).

All these problems appeared when upgrading to Karmic. In the previous
ubuntu release, all worked really fine.

My hardware settings are as follows (sudo lshw):

   description: Notebook
   product: HP Pavilion dv3500 Notebook PC
   vendor: Hewlett-Packard
   version: F.15
   serial: CNU9286D62
   width: 32 bits
   capabilities: smbios-2.4 dmi-2.4
   configuration: boot=normal chassis=notebook uuid=801A8556-865A-86F0-8786-881C88B2893E
 *-core
      description: Motherboard
      product: 1505
      vendor: Inventec
      physical id: 0
      version: KBC Version 13.14
      serial: Base Board Serial Number
      slot: Base Board Chassis Location
    *-firmware
         description: BIOS
         vendor: Hewlett-Packard
         physical id: 0
         version: F.15 (05/04/2009)
         size: 1MiB
         capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect socketedrom edd int13floppynec int13floppytoshiba int13floppy360 int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int9keyboard int10video acpi usb
    *-cpu
         description: CPU
         product: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T6400  @ 2.00GHz
         vendor: Intel Corp.
         physical id: 12
         bus info: cpu@0
         version: 6.7.10
         serial: 0001-067A-0000-0000-0000-0000
         slot: CPU
         size: 1200MHz
         capacity: 2GHz
         width: 64 bits
         clock: 800MHz
         capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx x86-64 constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm cpufreq
         configuration: id=0
    *-pci
         description: Host bridge
         product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub
         vendor: Intel Corporation
         physical id: 100
         bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
         version: 07
         width: 32 bits
         clock: 33MHz
       *-pci:0
            description: PCI bridge
            product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Graphics Port
            vendor: Intel Corporation
            physical id: 1
            bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
            version: 07
            width: 32 bits
            clock: 33MHz
            capabilities: pci pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
            configuration: driver=pcieport-driver
            resources: irq:24 ioport:5000(size=4096) memory:d0000000-d2ffffff ioport:c0000000(size=268435456)
          *-display
               description: VGA compatible controller
               product: G98 [GeForce 9300M GS]
               vendor: nVidia Corporation
               physical id: 0
               bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
               version: a1
               width: 64 bits
               clock: 33MHz
               capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom
               configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
               resources: irq:16 memory:d2000000-d2ffffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff(prefetchable) memory:d0000000-d1ffffff ioport:5000(size=128)
....
 *-power UNCLAIMED
      description: OEM_Define1
      product: OEM_Define4
      vendor: OEM_Define2
      physical id: 1
      version: OEM_Define5
      serial: OEM_Define2
      capacity: 75mWh

*** lsb_release -rd
Description:    Ubuntu 9.10
Release:        9.10

*** apt-cache policy gnome-power-manager
gnome-power-manager:
 Instal·lat: 2.28.1-0ubuntu1
 Candidat: 2.28.1-0ubuntu1
 Taula de versió:
 *** 2.28.1-0ubuntu1 0
       500 http://cat.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
       100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

*** What do I expect?
The correct operation of the battery monitor, showing the correct remaining time and percentage of the battery, working always correctly, independently of whether the power is connected to the computer or not.