Software to show battery life of laptop?

Question

Possible Duplicates:
Find time to charge in windows 7
How can I always display the remaining battery time on the Windows 7 taskbar?

What is a small, free piece of software I can use to show battery life of my laptop? I would like to see the hours remaining, and total capacity, not just the percentage shown by Windows XP.

Solution 1

i've just found that when I double click the regular battery icon.. if I unplug the power cord, a new line appears saying how many hours and minutes remaining "total time remaining" appears, under Total battery power remaining xx% So if win xp does it, no freeware necessary or not that necessary.

Added- It looks like
a)the ACDC adaptor has to be unplugged from it b)the power has to be below 100% i.e. 99% or less. Then, it shows time remaining.

Added- I have chosen to accept my answer as the best. Because, reading my question, anybody answering correctly should spot a flawed assumption that it makes, and should have corrected it. I wrote "I would like to see the hours remaining, and total capacity, not just the percentage shown by Windows XP."

A correct answer should have said that most laptops running win XP WILL show the hours remaining. This infact negates the main need for such 3rd party software (other than a)convenience or b)uncooperative laptops). There was a mistaken assumption in my question that should have been spotted and corrected, and its correction held the answer to my question.

nhinkle did mention it, but as a useful elaborative comment to my answer after I had already spotted it and in effect, by me spotting it, I answered my question by destroying the false assumption I had made. good comment though!

Solution 2

I use BatteryBar for this on my HP laptop, and it works pretty well. I use it on Windows 7, but their website says it works just fine on XP. This software is nice since it will show you the discharge/charge rate, and learns based on previous experience how long your battery will last under different conditions. It's not always entirely accurate, but it works pretty well. They have a free version, and a pro version with extra features. (I get by fine with the regular version.)

Solution 3

There are 3rd party tools that provide such functionality, like this one, that you can find with a quick search. I haven't used any myself, so I can't speak to their efficacy.

Comments

[Pekka]

Seeing as "how much left in hours / minutes" depends heavily on actual usage, it is impossible to predict exactly. You probably know this, but as a side note

[nhinkle]

@studiohack, I thought that at first too, but after closely reading the questions, this one is about the remaining time on the battery, and that question is about the time remaining until the battery is done charging. Therefore, I posit that they are separate questions and ought to remain open.

[studiohack]

@nhinkle: ah, yes, you're right! thanks for the clarification!

[nhinkle]

Windows (both XP and newer versions) will report the estimated time remaining only if the battery's circuitry supplies the necessary information for it to make that calculation. On most laptops this works, but on some (particularly HPs it seems), the battery circuitry doesn't do this, so Windows won't report it. Thus you need a third-party tool in those situations. Good tip though for people whose systems to report it automatically!

[Sasha Chedygov]

Fixed your link. You had it pointing to the image. :)