checking information on battery status

On your notebook computer, you can use:

acpitool

to check the status of the battery.  And here is a sample result:

unsigned_nerd@vaiosucks ~ % acpitool
Battery #1     : discharging, 99.82%, 03:20:37
AC adapter     : off-line
Thermal zone 1 : ok, 51 C

It seems there are many other useful functionalities which I will consult its manpage for more options to play with my vaio.