Just worked through this problem on KDE, and sent this to them, and wanted you all to know about it too. Glen On a fresh load of Suse Linux 8.1 containing KDE 3.0.3 on my Dell Inspiron 8000 latptop, the battery meter was "X"'ed out and not displaying correctly. Moreover, if I tried to open the icon, I'd get a message that my ACPI kernel support was only partially enabled. Even building a new kernel with the ACPI support fully in the kernel didn't work. Many thanks to Derek Fountain who pointed me in the direction of his solution, which is to add: apm=on acpi=off to the GRUB menu or lilo.conf file, making them kernel parameters on boot. Booting in this way restored perfect service to my KLaptop battery meter! Submitted just to help others find a solution - the problem seems to be in the Dell BIOS's interaction with the SuSE kernel - but since it's manifested in KDE, I wanted to report it here. Glen