Use a laptop whilst you're on the train on the way to a meeting and it's fairly difficult using Windows to judge the remaining charge, effectively. Sometimes the amount of time remaining can fluctuate wildly. One minute you have a couple of hours left, the next it's dropped to just over an hour. Battery monitoring is dependent on CPU and disc usage. Playback a disc from your laptop and the remaining charge will drop suddenly. You want a legitimate indication of the remaining power so you can judge how much time you have until you need to power down your laptop.

BatteryBar 3.0.48 is a free battery monitoring software device that's a definite improvement over the technology built in to Windows. It constantly monitors battery usage, reports back when you are potentially running low or performing a task that is taxing your battery power.

BatteryBar link.

04 Feb 2009