power management in ubuntu for laptop

Hi

I have the following problem, when I try to work on battery in my laptop, ubuntu consumes power very rapidly and after couple of minuts my laptop is out of battery power.
Previosly had win xp on that machine and win was able to manage battery power much better then linux.

Is there any way I can improve it under linux ?

thx for help.

Are you sure that it is a real message? I mean, are you sure that your battery power is critically low? I recommend to left your laptop only with battery power and ignore the message to see if it is real. I say this because I had exactly the same problem, but the message was quite fake.