14 DAY TRIAL // Although I have a couple of my own, I was never too much of a notebook fan. I admit their advantages over desktop computers in some situations and that they make your life much easier if you are more of a traveler, but there is one thing I never liked about them: the batteries they come equipped with are too feeble for our hardware necessities. You have to make the most of it in a few hours or head for the nearest power outlet, otherwise leaving your work unfinished is imminent.
Sure, there are various methods for conserving the energy for longer periods of time, and not putting hardware components to use is one of them, or cutting the monitor brightness a bit, or using as little USB ports as possible. These all contribute to increasing the standby period and the life of the battery, giving way to extended use of your notebook.
And yet, it often happens to be taken by surprise by a swift battery discharge or worse, an unexpected power off of the machine, due to incorrect reading of battery charge level. The longer you use the notebook, the more deteriorated the reading is. One minute you read a 30% charge of the battery, two minutes later you are alerted of the need to connect the laptop to a power source.
Fortunately there is still hope with UPL Battery Extender to the rescue. This software solution is designed to accurately calculate the power of the battery and show you exactly how much juice is left for running your notebook. For all its services, you have to pay $14.95, but you benefit from a trial period before actually buying it. Evaluation period extends for 30 days or 100 uses, so there will be plenty of time for a proper testing.
There is no interface, there are no buttons or settings to be made, just run the application on your notebook and follow the instructions. For accurately determining the power in the battery, you will first have to fully charge the notebook and then set UPL Battery Extender to calculate mode and let it run its algorithm. But before this, if you are running XP, go to Control Panel and, under Power Options, uncheck the alert boxes. This way the process will not be interrupted. I also recommend changing power options to a higher usage mode when the laptop is not charging, when UPL Battery Extender is calculating.
During calculation you should leave the computer alone and not use it until it shuts down completely. The next time you start your computer and it is not charging, UPL Battery Extender will get into its role and display the charge of the battery in percentage and the time left for running the notebook. The time is not displayed in system tray next to its icon, but separately on the screen and can be moved anywhere on the desktop. The limitations of the software allow its positioning on the screen to your favorite place only temporarily, as the clock will automatically come to the default location, in the middle of the desktop screen. I wish I could say it is not intrusive, but unfortunately it supports no settings and the developer designed it to stay on top of all windows.
Testing the software on Vista revealed a few mishaps that also happen to the default battery reading software on the testing notebook: variations of the time left for using the device. It happened more than once for UPL Battery Extender to show 1 hour left of usage and a few minutes later to show 1 hour and 16 minutes left and some more time later to come to its initial senses and show 1 hour left. And all this without touching the notebook.
I have to mention that the notebook is quite new and the battery vigorous enough to keep it running for a couple of hours. But it seems that UPL Battery Extender misinterpreted battery sensors and shut the computer down way ahead of its time. In my case, when UPL put the computer into hibernation mode (a very clever thing to do as all the information in RAM is placed on the disk and you will not lose one thing of your work) I had about 60% of battery left which normally would provide enough juice for at least an hour (depending on usage).
On an XP equipped laptop, however, UPL Battery Extender was as accurate as could be and there was no misleading regarding the juice left in the battery. In this case the user is alerted correctly and when the little timer turns red, you should definitely start charging the battery or at least consider saving your work.
The Good
The application requires absolutely no training for handling it and user's effort is minimum in this direction. It displays a timer showing the remaining time for using the notebook and its activity can be interrupted anytime.
On Vista, it will put the notebook to hibernation mode, thus saving all your work for the next start.
The Bad
During our testing, it had trouble with accurately displaying the remaining time in Vista environment as it put the notebook into hibernation mode, although there was pretty much battery left. Both charging and discharging percentage were inaccurate on Vista Home Premium.
Testing version will not allow you the changing of timer position.
The Truth
On XP it worked just fine and its readings were accurate but it failed to do the same in Vista environment.
There is no effort in using the software, and all you need is a little patience for it to calculate the capacity of the battery.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
