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    How can I estimate how much battery I have left?

    Discussion in 'HP' started by MasturB, Nov 13, 2006.

  1. MasturB

    MasturB Notebook Geek

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    It says I only have 72% left on my 6 cell, how can I estimate how much battery I have left?

    My friend's gateway laptop that was much cheaper has an automatic battery time estimator in his system tray. It tells him exactly how much time he has left under the settings he has. Is there anyway for me to find out how much I have left instead of it just saying 72%?
     
    MasturB, Nov 13, 2006
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  2. 4cefed4

    4cefed4 Notebook Evangelist

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    I don't think there is, but I'm curious too if someone out there found a program on the web or something...
     
    4cefed4, Nov 13, 2006
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  3. artless423

    artless423 Newbie

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    It's most likely just a program that estimates the time based on windows calulated percentage and how fast it is decreasing.
    Here is a free one: click.

    Type "battery laptop" under Softpedia's search and there are others. Some are not free.
     
    artless423, Nov 13, 2006
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  4. 4cefed4

    4cefed4 Notebook Evangelist

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    Unless it takes a full battery cycle for a time feature to start working, it doesn't seem like it's going to give an estimate. I use CoolMon and haven't gotten the battery time features to work there either. I don't think it's displaying fan or temperature information either though.
     
    4cefed4, Nov 13, 2006
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  5. powerup93

    powerup93 Guest

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    Hey there. We all have the same problem because stupid HP doesn't include a battery time calculator with these series of laptops! Really stupid.
    I've gone online and searched and tried practically all viable options. I've narrowed it down and I use Laptop Battery Monitor 1.1.12
    http://www.download.com/Laptop-Battery-Monitor/3004-2094_4-10442543.html?tag=tab_scr

    It works better than all the other ones and is able to stay and load in the taskbar automatically.
    There are of course a few stupid design issues. Such as, the icon does not look like a battery so it throws you off a bit and it doesn't display the time left in small text so you can just glance at the taskbar and be off. You have to hold your mouse over the icon to get the popup. I think it takes a good amount of memory than it should....my Task Manager says it takes ~10mb. It has popup dialog boxes that can get a bit annoying.

    Don't let all this discourage you...overall it's better to use than the other options out there right now. I wish someone would make a clone of the ones they already have on systems.
     
    powerup93, Nov 14, 2006
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