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    HEL80 Battery Time Left Notification?

    Discussion in 'Other Manufacturers' started by triplets, Aug 21, 2006.

  1. triplets

    triplets Notebook Enthusiast

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    On my HEL80, on battery power, it only provides me a percentage of battery life remaining. On other laptops I have had it provided me time left (e.g. 2 hours remaining). How can I make the HEL80 provide time remianing on the battery.

    David
     
    triplets, Aug 21, 2006
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  2. Atook

    Atook Notebook Evangelist

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    I'm pretty sure that's a software thing. The other laptops that have the time are showing it on some proprietary software usually.

    NHC is a free piece of software that does that and more on the HEL80. Some people have reported performance issues after installing it though. I had it on my machine, and didn't notice anything in the way of slowdown.
     
    Atook, Aug 21, 2006
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  3. triplets

    triplets Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks for the info. I found a free small program called Power Center 2.12 that does what I was looking for.

    David
     
    triplets, Aug 22, 2006
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  4. empeka

    empeka Newbie

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    it's not only software thing. some batteries have such option.
    you may check it for example with RightMark CPU Clock utility. (baterry info-> variable parameters).
    software calculation of remaining lifetime may be inaccurate.
     
    empeka, Aug 22, 2006
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  5. pyro9219

    pyro9219 Notebook Deity NBR Reviewer

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    I have noticed I dont get any sort of "usable time remaining" on my hel80 either.. oh well, dont really need it..

    Note:
    Even with RMClock I dont get it.
     
    pyro9219, Oct 9, 2006
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  6. chrisyano

    chrisyano Hall Monitor NBR Reviewer

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    Yeah, it's not a standard feature on this notebook. I have seen it on a couple of Dell notebooks though. I'm sure some of the simple tweaks above could do it though.
     
    chrisyano, Oct 9, 2006
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  7. pyro9219

    pyro9219 Notebook Deity NBR Reviewer

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    If RM Clock and/or the OS can't do it, I'm not installing extra junk just to tell me I have X minutes remaining... I'll stick with a % left
     
    pyro9219, Oct 10, 2006
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  8. barspi

    barspi Notebook Consultant

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    My battery measuring is working fine in Linux and Windows. It shows my percentage remaining.. I'm not sure if you can translate that to minutes but consider that it's not an exact measure. It depends a lot on how you are using the machine, hard drive activity, WiFi activity, LCD brightness, processor usage. So you might see 40% remaining, and then you walk away from the machine for 20 minutes and you come back and it only got down to 37%, but you start working hard on it and it goes down faster.
    In any case, today was my second day on battery only. And I was having some light to light-moderate usage, in Windows. (Surfing the web and installing some programs). I got 3:30 hours and I was down to 15%. The LCD was one step up from lowest, and it was still bright enough to work comfortably in an office environment, and the WiFi was turned on.
    I guess I could have gotten to 3:45 before running out. And withtout WiFi (such as on a plane) it can get to the advertised 4 hours. That's twice as much as my old machine!!!
     
    barspi, Oct 10, 2006
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