Gkrellm not reading battery usage correctly

[Dan Finn]

FreeBSD stewie.thna.net 5.2.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE #1: Fri
Jul 16 10:36:15 PDT 2004    
root at stewie.thna.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/STEWIE  i386

gkrellm 2.2.1

This is on a Dell Inspiron 2650

Gkrellm recognizes when the system changes from plugged in to
unplugged.  However once unplugged the battery percentage left drops
pretty quickly.  I also let it get lower than I ever have today and I
noticed that it gets to 0 and then resets and starts counting down
from 100% again.

I tried setting 
apm_enable="YES"
in /etc/rc.conf but that didn't fix it.

I also tried setting up a DSDT like so :

acpi_dsdt_load="YES"
acpi_dsdt_type="acpi_dsdt"
acpi_dsdt_name="/boot/DSDT.aml"

that I downloaded from a site that was supposed to be specific to this
laptop but that didn't seem to fix things either.

Any help would be really appreciated.  I am about to take this laptop
on a trip where it will likely be powered only by the battery for
periods of time and I would like to get an accurate reading of how
much battery life is left.  Gkrellm seems like a good way to do it but
I would be open to other ideas also.

Thanks
Dan