battery plasmoid and remaining time..

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday 14 May 2009, Chani wrote:
> On May 14, 2009 13:25:19 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Thursday 14 May 2009, David Nolden wrote:
> > > Yes maybe, but to the average user the percentage will be a near
> > > useless number.
> >
> > so people don't find the battery indicator on their cell phone useful?
>
> ugh, I hate that thing. what the hell does one bar mean?  it could mean a
> couple of hours or a couple of days,

which is actually the point. you can't figure it out, with your human brain 
that excels at fuzzy thinking, and you expect a computer to?

you're asking for magic to happen. "please predict how many phone calls i'll 
get in the next 2 hours" <-- that's what it would take to translate "one bar" 
into "38 minutes left"

> sound. which itself seems very vague - is it programmed to tell me it's
> dying when there's a few hours left or a few minutes? I never have the

if you're talking on it, probably a few minutes. if you don't use it, it might 
last for quite a while longer. see the problem now?

> them. I like numbers). 10% on a 4-hour battery is very different from 10%
> on a 1-hour battery, and it's taken me... eight months to properly get that
> into my head.

your 4 hours battery is my 2 hours batter, or maybe your 1 hour battery is my 
2 hour battery.

unless it's saturday, and then maybe it's the reverse.

> I don't want the computer to
> refuse to give me any estimate just because it can't get it right down to
> the second :P 

it that was the scope of the problem, i wouldn't care. it's not the scope of 
the problem, however.

> if it can make a better estimate than I can, then it's
> useful.

except that instead of not trusting yourself, you now don't trust the 
computer.

> heck, even if it can get the same accuracy as me it's useful,
> because I don't want to have to do all that mental math every time I'm
> wondering how much time I've got...

i think most people tend to just look at it and go "hm. i have 25%. i don't 
need to worry just yet."

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Software

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