I love my laptops. Not many admit they love work… but I do. It’s great to take work on the road, on vacation and even at parties where you pretend you’re having fun. That’s the reason I carry my laptop more often than I do my phone. These miracle tools ensure that not a single hour is wasted.
Most laptops have gotten more efficient. Lithium ion battery technologies and shrinking microprocessors have allowed most of these gadgets to last almost 6 hours without AC. That’s quite a boon. Back in 1999, a laptop runs one hour on batteries… then croaks. Now, you can crunch spreadsheets all day and have enough juice left by 8pm to check your twitter updates.
Batteries have improved, but amazingly battery meters haven’t. Have you noticed how inaccurate Windows XP reports remaining time in huge jumps? At first, it’s 100%. Then 20 minutes later it’s 70%. An hour after then you’re down to 20%. It appears that the default battery icon fed by laptop ACPI is crap. You think you’re out of juice, but you actually have more. Much more.
A programmer apparently got fed up. Perhaps it was the stress of an erroneously draining battery that drove him nuts. Maybe he simply got tired switching batteries that looked dead, but had lots of time left. Whatever the reason, he decided to write a brilliant battery meter. Unlike the XP meter, his program actually profiles voltage drop across the usable life of the battery, giving you precise stats down to the last minute and percentage of battery life. The meter reports data like “3 mins left, 2% remaining.” Now that’s cool!
If you’re as pissed as I am with the XP meter, you’d love this:
http://www.geocities.com/mosc_007/index.html
Have fun!
