Lately, I’ve been looking for a nice little battery meter widget or application to use with my netbooks so I can have a better gauge on how long their last on a single full charge.
The BatteryBar does just that pretty nicely.
It’s got a small footprint, sits on the taskbar and works very well in providing almost accurate information about your laptop‘s battery.
The screenshot above is for my HP Mini 311 which I upgraded to Windows 7. It also show how much is the capacity of the battery and the current health (battery wear).
BatteryBar tells me I’m getting around 3.5 hours for a full charge although from experience I was able to squeeze near 5 hours of use on this unit before. Will be running the software on all my laptops now and see how they all compare.
Check out or download the Battery Bar here and let me know how what’s the indicated battery life for you model of laptop in the comments.
Update: There have been questions if this app is reliable. My observation is that the computation of the battery life is based on historical usage. So, if your first 30 minutes of use you play a video then it computes the remaining battery life based on the amount of power consumed vis-a-vis the elapsed time. However, if you changed your usage on the next 30 minutes by just running MS Word, it then recomputes the estimated time remaining based on the power consumption of the last 2 tasks you’ve made with the laptop. As such, you will notice the remaining battery life often fluctuates as you continuously run your laptop.
I’ve just tried out both Battery Bar and Battery Care, and I’d probably agree with Karl’s comments (dated Dec 13th, 2009 at 5:26 pm (#10))… I ran both utilities side by side. Both seem to be accurate enough (difference of just about 10-15 minutes). Battery Bar is visually more appealing and doesn’t get much in the way of my netbooks 1024 x 600 display. But I found Battery Care’s set of information and functionalities more useful.
Okay, I installed Battery Bar on my I year old HP Compaq 6510b… battery wear is 0%, which is hard to believe. But lets see after a few days of use.
Twitter: littlewolf
says:
Nice little app. My Lenovo already has a power manager with a built-in battery meter. ^_^
And I second the BatteryCare recommendation. Helps you monitor your battery’s health thru discharge counts and wear levels.
http://batterycare.bkspot.com/en/index.html
Wow, Abe, this is a great software. Thanks im using it now..I may say great things comes in small packages..this is one great app!
Thanks abe! great app! Great things comes in small packages! really helps a lot..
I am having some problems with my HP DV6816tx as it drains battery fast when I’m doing presentations or using a second/extended monitor. This application will probably help.
I’ll also try it out on Acer 4736Z, the unit has great battery life and with this app find out how I can extend it some more.
Thanks and God bless.
Twitter: OsirisDev
says:
As the author of BatteryBar, I can tell you that the build-in Windows “time remaining” meter is NOT accurate. Windows calculates time remaining based on the exact discharge rate at the moment the battery is sampled. In other words, Windows is telling you, “Assuming the battery discharge rate remains exactly the same as it is right in this moment, your battery will last x hours and xx minutes.”
The problem is that discharge rates fluctuate quite a bit and batteries discharge in a non-linear fashion, usually slower closer to 100%.
BatteryBar keeps historical usage data on your battery and keeps track of exactly how long it takes to move from 99% to 98% and so on. With BatteryBar, you can literal watch the timer tick the minutes away rather than getting the huge time remaining fluctuations you get with Windows.
I hope that helps.
i’m using battery bar and battery care…
wonder lang ako, bakit ganito…
[IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/2mrwu80.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i46.tinypic.com/nqnuyg.jpg[/IMG]
any tips?
ung full lifetime less than 2 hrs
tia
sorr i should have used these links…
http://i50.tinypic.com/2mrwu80.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/nqnuyg.jpg
Twitter: _ampere_
says:
i have this app installed in my netbook and it has a different reading from my windows battery indicator more than two hours ang difference 5:27 hours sa application at sa win batt indicator 7:27 hours…
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Hi!
I just want to ask who is the developer of this app?
Thanks!
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