Handy program for monitoring Laptop battery levels

[maniac]

Been looking for something like this for ages, infact I posted a thread over 2 years ago asking the very question (http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/16134-laptop-battery-monitor.html) and evaluated all sorts of programs along the way, but all the other ones I've looked at have been naff. Because we hide the system tray on our student machines they don't get the battery warnings on laptops or any ability to check the battery level, however this handy program solves that problem very nicely - why can't windows have this built in!

 

Osiris Development - BatteryBar, the most accurate battery meter for Windows

 

This runs in its basic form as freeware, but there is a pro version you can buy that does all sorts of other fancy things - unfortunitely its biggest downfall is the students can activate the 30day trial of the pro version, but because we run mandatory profiles here that resets itself when they logoff as the settings file is stored in the profile. I'm sure some students will fiddle, but none of the settings are saved, a small price to pay for the fact that it does exactly what I need it to and exactly what staff have been asking for for ages.

 

Hope someone else finds it useful.

 

Also I've packaged this as an MSI if anyone wants it let me know

 

Mike.

Edited March 18, 2010 by maniac

[AlexB]

Would love to have the msi if you've already done the hard work

 

Cheers

[Flakes]

can you post up the msi? would like to see this in action.

[JJonas]

Thanks another vote for the MSI

[maniac]

Just had to tweek the MSI, it was built with WinInstall LE and as such it managed to pick up a load of stuff it didn't actually need, so just spent a while removing the un-necessary bits.

 

Please test first - it works for me, but I offer no garuntee with it.

 

Mike.

Battery Monitor.zip

[JJonas]

You left off the .msi extension in that file.

 

Is there a similar battery monitor for Ubuntu?

[maniac]

You left off the .msi extension in that file.

 

 

Un Zip it, you'll see everything you need then. WinInstall LE builds MSI's in weird ways, but they work - that's all I care about!

 

Mke.

[AlexB]

Cheers

[Arthur]

Just had to tweek the MSI, it was built with WinInstall LE and as such it managed to pick up a load of stuff it didn't actually need, so just spent a while removing the un-necessary bits.

Thanks for the MSI, Mike. However, I noticed there were still lots of redundant bits in it (various Windows and Kaspersky registry keys and empty components) so I cleaned it up and created a MST (attached).

Battery Monitor.mst

[maniac]

Yeah, I must admit I did build that MSI on the wrong workstation, I usually use a clean build, but this one must have had kaspersky on for some reason - thought I'd already been through and removed them all.

[Netware]

thanks

[simpsonj]

Rather than start a new thread on a similar subject, I wondered whether there was a battery program that does the above, but sends the information to a server or Desktop computer? Would really like to be able to monitor whether laptops are being plugged in across the school, and rather than checking the hardware, a piece of software that monitors the battery level and sends the information to a server every 10 minutes or so would be invaluable.

 

If it had a nice GUI, you could even force it onto the teachers desktop so that they can see whether the laptops are being charged or not.

 

Thanks for the above though, will test deploy the Battery bar, looks very useful!

[jerads49]

There is the Laptop Battery Power Monitor Tool that's part of the Desktop Central Free Windows Tools 2 package. You can monitor the battery power of laptops in a network, and can specify alerts to sound when percentage drops below a certain level.