BattStat - Battery Status monitor and power management freeware for Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000 x86/x64

Updated June 5, 2010 - new version 0.99
Download version 0.99b

When I first got my Fujitsu T90D (P5010-equivalent), I moved away from using Sony 505 and Z505 models. The only thing I missed was PowerPanel, their semi-proprietary Phoenix-based power app. The single most useful thing that program does is to monitor battery usage and make a true estimate of runtime. The second most useful thing is to select power profiles, and control things like CPU speed and screen brightness.

The Fujitsu provided functions which, to me, were a shade of this formerly essential support. The battery, while accurate, basically provided fixed runtime estimates, which were not adaptive in any meaningful way. The Hotkey utility dimmed the screen, but did little else in the way of power management. I missed PowerPanel!

So, as a hobby I decided to code up a replacement. It's not perfect but I'm rather proud of it, and I'm experimenting with sharing it by making it available for download as freeware.

I call it "BattStat", and it's a systray application which uses the smart battery support in Windows 7, Vista, XP and 2000 to monitor power usage, battery charge, CPU speed, CPU usage, and power events such as standby/hibernate/resume, battery events, etc. Additionally, it's capable of monitoring CPU temperature (via Intel Core internal sensors, or ACPI thermal sensors), hard drive temperature (if the drive supports it), and even control traditional hard drive APM/AAM/spindown settings, like the Hitachi PowerBooster does. The binary is about 320KB and though it comes with an installer, it requires no special installation, dll's, etc. It can be autorun from the registry with a checkbox. It can run with or without administrator privileges, though certain functions will be disabled without it.

The systray icon resembles PowerPanel rather strongly, but integrates battery capacity, AC power status, and CPU speed in a single icon. It has a graphical display window that can be popped up on-demand, which graphs up to 8 parameters over a several hour period, and shows instantaneous status in a window (which is also available in a systray tooltip). It estimates runtime when discharging, and charge time when charging. It displays instantaneous and long-term average power usage.

In addition to the systray and main window graph, it has a toolbar-style window that can float anywhere on the screen which compactly integrates the systray icon, a charge meter and summary of runtime.

It has a programmable hotkey to turn off the screen, which can be used to save significant power when running on battery if you need to turn away for a short time, it's also nice as a "privacy key" if you need to blank your screen instantly. The program can run a program or batch file any time the system switches power source, or resumes from standby or hibernation, something I find useful to perform certain checks automatically to recover state that many programs blissfully ignore.

There's a detailed battery display for up to two batteries, with names, voltages, temperature, design capacities, wear percentages, etc, as provided by the batteries themselves.

Finally, it can switch Win7/Vista power plans and XP/2000 power schemes with a single click, as well as standby and hibernate the system.

Discussion and support for the program happens on the most excellent "Ultra-portables Forum" hosted by LeoG. This forum is highly recommended for any mobile notebook user, including Fujitsu, Sony, Panasonic, PortableOne and many other brands. It's a great resource for support, tips, and information sharing.

Click here for the Battery Status thread

Click here to go to the download page...

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Revision History:

Version 0.99b (June 5, 2010)
- Supports Windows 7
- Supports 32-bit and 64-bit systems
- Installer/uninstaller and Start Menu icon
- Improved power and runtime estimation techniques
- Long-term power estimate gathering and display
- Aero-off and screen dim control to save power under 7/Vista
- Toolbar transparency and mouseover control
- ACPI temperature zone polling
- Support SATA drives
- Support reading temperature on AMD CPUs

Beta 0.98 (February 17, 2008)
- New autostart works with Vista Defender
- Improve CPU temperature driver start, stop and cleanup (works with encrypted temp directory too)
- Improve drive temperature and APM/AAM compatibility with SATA drives, others
- Options to display temperatures in Fahrenheit/Celsius, and to select tray icon and/or toolbar
- Don't enable Standby and Hibernate if not supported by system
- Enhanced installer

Beta 0.97 (October 20, 2007)
- Add "running time on battery" summary to detail display
- Don't include the capacity of offline or unused batteries
- Improved cleanup on program exit/terminate

Beta 0.96 (October 20, 2007)
- Fix detail status report for 2 batteries when one not active
- Fix screen-off hotkey repeat issue

Beta 0.95 (August 25, 2007)
- Windows Vista full support:
- - power plans
- - admin privs (needed for certain settings)
- - display more accurate cpu speed
- Intel Core/Core2 on-chip CPU temperature supported
- Run a program on resume, AC and DC power status change
- Bugfixes and settings/display window cleanup
- Streamlined install, with uninstall support

Beta 0.9 (March 6, 2007)
- CPU speed report fixes
- Battery status/capacity fixed
- Support drive AAM/APM control
- Support CPU temperature reporting on ACPI machines

Beta 0.8a (April 23, 2006)
- Re-corrected fix for conflict with Drive Image 2002.

Beta 0.8 (April 22, 2006)
- Enable drive APM/AAM/spindown control
- Improve CPU speed reporting high/mid/low
- Fix capacity estimate problem when swapping secondary battery
- Correct conflict with Drive Image 2002 (hopefully)

Beta 0.7 (September 7, 2005)
- Avoid need to install libraries on certain systems
- Fix problem with multibyte power scheme names.

Beta 0.6 (August 28, 2005)
- Initial revision