Saturday, August 15, 2009

Checking Battery Capacity in Windows 7

A new feature in Windows 7 is the ability to check battery capacity.
Take a look at the following:

Open a Command Prompt Windows with Administrative Permission
Enter:
powercfg /Energy

It will create a report in
C:\Windows\system32\energy-report.html

There is one line like this
Battery:Battery Information
Battery ID 11121SANYOAS07A31
Manufacturer SANYO
Serial Number 11121
Chemistry LION
Long Term 1
Design Capacity 48840
Last Full Charge 41214
The amount of battery life left can be calculated by
41214/48840*100
Which equates to 84.38% meaning my laptop battery has only 84.38% of charge left (because I didn't take good care of it. There was a few times when the battery was almost fully drain)

So make sure you switch off the laptop or connect it to an AC outlet when battery life reaches 10% and do not expose it to high temperatures.

Alternatively you can download the new HWMonitor as it reports the charge capacity directly.

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