A battery monitoring utility for notebooks

Current version: 1.5 / 10-uses trial / 1,950K / updated 8/26/2011

Smarter Battery is a utility for notebook battery monitoring, intended to provide you with all the battery data, to help prolong its life and save its energy. It can show you the evolution of the smart battery's capacity during the charge / discharge cycles and computes a few important battery parameters, such as the wear level and discharge cycles count. This program continuously reads the battery data, making a prediction for the time remaining; it also features two alarms, for low / critical battery capacity, triggered by either values of time remaining or capacity percentage you set. Smart Battery glossary

Version 1.5 allows you to perform the battery calibration, whenever you want, so the remaining charge will be shown accurately. We included in this version:

•  Fast battery discharge function, running for up to 200 minutes and having three levels of CPU load;

•  Green Mode function, in order to save the battery energy, anytime, with a single click or keystroke;

•  Code optimization to the calibration and fast discharge procedures, start / stop options.

•  Voice alerts for Charging / Discharging / Fully charged battery states.

•  Graphic enhancements and ergonomic, redesigned menus.

When launched, the program checks your notebook and enumerates the existing slots and the battery you may have installed on. They will be displayed in the left fields of the Battery Information page. The first battery found in your system will become the current one, and all the data and program commands will use it as reference. To select another battery, if there is more than one, you can use the Next button. This utility continuously gathers data from the selected battery and shows the values in the remained fields, using a fixed sampling rate of five seconds.

The Graphic page offers you an easy to understand evolution of the current battery capacity, drawn with a thick orange line, for an interval of 60 (elapsed) minutes. It can be captured, automatically numbered (SBshot1, 2 and so on) and saved as jpg picture in program folder (placed in user's Documents), using the Save data button. If the battery mode is Discharging, a green line will be displayed, representing the future graphic of the battery power, based on the time remaining read from battery or estimated by the software. For a good battery, most of the time this green line should be parallel with the orange one, without big angle changes (drops of battery capacity). The battery capacity evolution is not linear, due to the processor usage, hard disk activity, screen brightness and so on. A red line is drawn, with a new estimation of time remaining, based on the highest discharge rate encountered in the current cycle - a kind of worst possible scenario. Check the picture below to see an example.

  The Settings Page contains two battery alerts and a few other options of the program. First one is Low Level Alert; if enabled, it will be triggered by the value of time remaining or the capacity percentage. This event will play a beep and a voice message (if the sound is enabled) and it will display the battery gadget; it can also change (lower) the display brightness, disable the Aero effects and mute the system volume. 

  Critical Alert - when occurs, it can save more battery power by turning off the monitor or by putting your system in standby or hibernate mode. These last options, if enabled, will interrupt all the Windows tasks if allowed; click Forced only if the open tasks are not important and data loss is impossible. The default value of this alert is 5 minutes or 5%. Notice that all these alerts are triggered by the current battery values.

Calibration page: it allows you to perform the battery calibration (C) and the battery fast discharge (D); there are also important fields contain statistical information for the first battery, such as the Absolute / Relative  Wear Level, Capacity Drop, Full Discharge Cycles and Usage Time; they give you a complete image about your battery life. In order to keep these data accurate, this utility must be kept running all the time on your notebook.

  New fields show the Discharge Duration and CPU Load, the number of days since the Latest Calibration and the total number of calibrations you have performed.

  The Webpages button shows you the Internet links to the Home, Download and Purchase pages. There are also links facilitating the e-mail communication with us; they automatically launch your default e-mail software if installed. You may press Check for New Version in order to find out if you have the latest release of the program.

The Battery Gadget, colored to show the current battery state, displaying the capacity percentage.

This program is a demo version. You can test it ten times, each for 15 minutes; to continue monitoring your battery after this period, you have to buy it. After the online payment, send us an e-mail containing your notebook's battery code(s). The program license allows you to use Smarter Battery on a single computer, for an unlimited period of time. We will send you a second registration, for free, in case you change the notebook battery within five years.