When to display the battery icon

[Corey Burger]

Hello all,

As some of you know, the currently policy seems to be that we are not
displaying the battery icon when both of the following are true:
1. The laptop is plugged in
2. The battery is fully charged

If this is in fact policy and not a bug, I disagree with it, for the
following reasons:

1. Lack of information: In the above state, the user only knows their
battery state through inferring that while both of the above states
are true, lack of a battery icon means charged and on AC. This means
that rather than just looking, they are forced to learn how to use the
battery icon. Nobody should be forced how to learn how to use a
battery icon, least of all my father.
2. Disappearing icon: Usually a disappearing icon means that the user
has done something. That is the purpose of the notification area. Now
admittly we abuse it for this, be regardless, the user has not done
anything to cause the icon to disappear. Observe much panic as my dad
tries to figure out which icon just disappeared and why.
3. Breaking consistency: No other distro or OS does this (AFAIK).
Windows hides the icon behind a little expander and OS X simply leaves
it there. Previous versions of Ubuntu had it their all the time.
Without a compelling reason to break consistency, I don't see why it
should be done.

I will disgress with a quick story about consistency. I recently got
involved with a project that is going to be installing a great deal of
Ubuntu machines where I live. One of their partners does adult
literacy, who relaying the following critical piece of information to
me: New computer users learn by rote. Do A, then B and then click C,
in the lower right. Tell them they can do A or B first, then maybe
click D over in the upper left and they freak? So why does this
matter? While most of the users reading this list are far beyond that,
the important thing to consider is that things you learn by rote are
much faster and use less brain power.  Therefor if you are consistent,
you are going to be forcing your users to use less brain power, always
a good thing.

Anyway, there are my (I think) well reasoned arguments as to why the
battery icon should be visible on the panel at all times.

Cheers,

Corey