[haus]

I'm a big fan of a program called batti. You can find it on here, I think. It's an old program but works wonderfully on the Intrepid (and every other WM device I've ever used). I configure mine to show a 2 pixel high bar all the way across the top of the screen (you can't set it at 1px or it disappears for some reason). The bar gets shorter as you use up your battery, and it takes no meaningful screen real estate.