Why can’t they sort out our batteries? It’s been decades now, and we’re still suffering from phones with half a day working life, MP3 players which run out mid-song and laptops which explode can’t even play a whole movie on battery. It’s not good enough. Even worse, no-one seems to make accurate battery gauges to indicate how long we’ve got to go before dark time, which makes it all very hit or miss.
One developer has decided to fight back via software, and has produced BatteryInfoView for laptop computer batteries. The tiny freeware program does nothing else except display all the info it can find about your current laptop battery. Name, serial number, chemistry…the lot.
The crucially cool bits of data are the ones which give the Designed Capacity and the Battery Wear Level, both of which tell you just how close your battery is to being totally useless for any real mobile computing work. Actually it’s rather depressing to see just how fast a standard laptop battery degrades over time. Anyway if you’re at all interested in monitoring your power situation at any time and in any airport, this is the utility you want and need. Really.