After editing your preferences file, you need to do
program menu > logout > restart icewm
for changes to take effect.

The battery monitor should work. Try this edit
# Show APM status on task bar in time-format
TaskBarShowAPMTime=0 # 0/1

If your network monitor is an orange square, then it's because you're traffic is at 100%. Hover your mouse over the square and you should get network info.

john