"freezing" problem when using Battery Status Applet

[Rixk Heidt]

Ever since I upgraded from FreeBSD 5.2.1  to FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE and
Gnome 2.6/2.8, I noticed that my system seemed to pause for a moment
every other second (a bit like stop-motion). This was very annoying when
playing back music. It doesn't matter what format the music is in, be it
MP3, Ogg Vorbis or WAV. Also the player doesn't matter: even waveplay in
an xterminal showed the same behaviour.
Also I had the feeling that the keyboard wasn't responding very well: I
had to type very slow, or I would only write half words.

Today I found the offending process: it appears that the battery charge
applet (otherwise known as the Battery Charge Monitor) is showing a
periodic spike in its CPU use. According to system monitor only for
about 11% CPU, but then again, system monitor wouldn't know because it
might suffer from the same "freezes".

After removing the battery applet from the panel, it seems that
performance is again how it should be.

Is this a known problem with the battery monitor? I am working on a Dell
Inspiron 8500 notebook, so having a battery monitor is quite convenient.
Fortunately the battery monitor in Gkrellm does not seem to suffer from
the same problem.


-- 
Rixk Heidt <rixk at heidt.nl>

"CETERVM CENSEO LOTI NOTAS ESSE DELENDAS"