Shallow Thoughts : tags : lenovo

Limiting Battery Charge on a Lenovo Carbon X1

Ever since I got my Lenovo Carbon X1, I've wished there was some way to limit the battery charge. I keep it plugged in to a USB hub and external monitor most of the time, which means that the battery is at 100% for weeks on end. That isn't particularly good for lithium ion batteries: it's better for battery life to stop charging at around 80%.

Lots of laptops, including Dells and Apples, have a charge limit feature in their BIOS, but I searched through the CX1's BIOS several times and never found anything, so I'd resigned myself.. But just this week I accidentally stumbled on a way to set this at runtime!

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Q is for Quadraphonic

... which is what I have now on my Carbon X1 gen 7 laptop.

Early reviews of this particular laptop praised its supposedly excellent speakers (as laptops go), but that has never been apparent on Linux.

It is an improvement over the previous version -- the microphone works now, which it didn't in 19.10 -- though in the meantime I acquired a Samson GoPro based on Embedded.fm's recommendation (it works very well).

But although the internal mic works now, the sound from the built-in speakers is just terrible, even worse than it was before. The laptop has four speakers, but Ubuntu is using only two.

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