I've installed LXDE 2012.12 and am in the process of customising it.
There are a couple of improvements over my previous version (2012.06 - upgraded of course) The touch pad works properly without my having to add code, and F4&F5 control the screen brightness - but I cannot find a battery monitor. On the earlier version it appears as a green/yellow bar at the right hand end of the lower panel along with other items like the volume control and network monitor, but it's not there in 2012.12.
The three applications that come up as installed when I search for "battery" in synaptic (apmd, acpi and batti) are present in both versions. I don't know which is responsible for the green/yellow bar, but I'd like to have it back.