laptop battery and SuSE 9.3

I made a clean install of SuSE 9.3 on my IBM thinkpad A20M laptop. It previously had 8.2. The battery drains unmercifully when in APM mode whenever I close the lid. It doesn't fully charge in ACPI mode. I use configure-thinkpad in APM mode and powersaved in ACPI mode. Currently the laptop is useless because it must be on AC all the thim or I have to shut it off so that the sleep mode dosn't drain the battery in a couple of hours. tia, KurtRR