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BatteryCare provides detailed laptop battery info

by Brad Linder on August 10, 2009 at 05:00 PM

Sure, Windows will do a decent job of estimating how much juice is left in your laptop battery and let you adjust your power management settings accordingly. But BatteryCare goes a few steps further, by providing you with information like the battery's total capacity, voltage, CPU temperature, and manufacturer, if the information is available.

The program also tracks your battery's discharge cycle. After a certain number of partial discharges, a notification pops up recommending you completely discharge the battery to optimize performance.

You can also use BatteryCare to automatically adjust your laptop power plan. For instance, it could switch to the home/office profile when plugged in, and the portable/laptop power pan when you unplug the laptop.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

Tags: battery, batterycare, freeware, laptop

Comments

ahbiAug 10th 2009 5:35PM

Neutral

I thought the point of LiIon batteries was that they didn't build up a "memory" and therefore didn't need full discharges like NiCds?

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JordanAug 11th 2009 11:23AM

Neutral

That's the supposed word, but I've noticed myself that the occasional complete discharge seems to boost the life.

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RobAug 10th 2009 10:53PM

Neutral

I'm trying it now. While the fact that it charges discharge cycles is cool and controls aero effects (which I personally don't think make a big difference), it doesn't seem like it's any more accurate than the Windows utility. I mean,.. it's nice that it monitors CPU temp, and discharge rate, while giving me details about the battery capacity, but really,.. is that really necessary?

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