SheepTech » Windows Vista

BatteryBar: Detailed Information on Laptop’s Battery Life

Vincent — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:29:34 +0000

The default battery indicator on laptops powered by Windows XP, Vista and 7 shows only the most basic information—% of battery juice available, estimated time left before the battery dies off, and charging or plugged in. You are simply out of luck if you want to know more about your laptop’s battery using it.

Whether you are a road warrior who cares much of your battery’s health or is just simply curious about it, check out BatteryBar. It sits beautifully on the taskbar indicating the percentage of battery juice left or time left depending on preference. Hovering it will reveal:

Percent of battery juice left
Capacity of battery – e.g 12,443 mWh of 17,294 mWh
Charged rate – e.g 13,642mW
Battery life left in time – e.g 0:34
Full battery lifetime in time – e.g 1:00
A/C – connected or disconnected
Battery wear – e.g 700% of 57,720 mWh

Connected to AC power supply:

Discharging, disconnected from AC supply

Charging

Accuracy of information

Quoted from BatteryBar’s homepage:

BatteryBar constantly monitors the status of your battery as you use your laptop. As it monitors your battery, it keeps historical data on your battery and provide you with a very accurate estimate of how much time is remaining on your battery.

In short, the longer you have it installed, the more accurate it gets.

What’s cool: The battery wear information is really awesome. With the numbers shown, you can’t deny that you need a laptop battery replacement, or a new laptop even. Of course, unless your wallet disagrees.

What’s not: You see, the default Windows battery indicator won’t warn even if the battery juice hits rock bottom. Neither do BatteryBar, unless you upgrade to BatteryBar Pro ($3 to $10), which would also gives you a couple of extra settings.

P.s: Yes. My battery condition is that bad :/

58 High-Quality Visual Styles For Windows Vista

Vincent — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:01:39 +0000

Humans love beautiful things. If you spend your entire life getting work done on a computer, it makes total sense to customize the look and feel of your desktop with the best possible theme.

If you’re a Windows Vista user, life is made easier for you as you are at the right place for some of the best Visual Styles for Windows Vista. If you are new to Visual Styles, learn how to patch your Windows Vista at How-To Geek before proceeding.

Otherwise, browse through all these awesome Visual Styles and pick one to get rid of your old boring theme already.

Jump straight to:

Black / Dark (25)
Silver / Gray (5)
Blue (5)
Transparent / Aero / Vista-licious (12)
Fancy (8)
Minimalistic (3)

Black / Dark (25)

SlanXP Edition3 for VistaBasic

Knorr Smooth Vista Port

Axis VS BETA

fuji

WE: Black – Vista Port

Transblack beta3

UltimateBaSiC

Silver / Gray (5)

Blue (5)

Ice Angel

Royale for Vista Basic

Royale CS

Royale For Vista

Plain_DeepBlue

Transparent / Aero / Vista-licious (12)

Satin2

Satin

Reanimaero VS for Vista

Clear Glow

GlassGlow RC1

Aero.Dynamic FINAL REL V2

Aero Clarity

Radar

Maxclear V3 for Vista

Clear vista

superclear

Longhorn M7 Remix II revisited

Fancy (8)

MAIKO for Vista Basic

CamouflageFinal

Minimalistic (3)

Plain Basic (blue)

Vista Classic Plus

Slantrast_Corbel

Is there any Visual Styles for Windows Vista that is too awesome to not be on this list? Share them in the comment section and they will be included here as well.

Add Default Wallpapers To Windows XP / Vista

Vincent — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:05:43 +0000

Most of my wallpapers are found on the internet. Whenever I encountered a decent wallpaper that looks appealing to me, I would right click on it and set it as desktop background—to see if it looks good on my desktop.

Unfortunately, there are times where I was not satisfied with the wallpaper, and want the older wallpaper again, that I did not download earlier, but just set it as desktop background using the right click menu. Therefore, it is only possible for me to obtain the wallpaper again if only I could remember where I encountered it in the past.

One of the easiest way to solve the problem is to simply download the wallpaper to just any location on your local disk. But instead, I prefer to add all my favorite wallpapers to the local wallpaper directory on my Windows XP.

Once they are moved into the directory, the wallpapers will appear as one of the default wallpapers on the Display Properties (Right click on Desktop > Properties). To do so, just simply move your selected wallpapers to the wallpaper folder.

Windows XP – C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper\
Windows Vista – C:\Users\*User Name*\Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery\

The next time you want to revert your wallpaper, you can just simply select it from the Display Properties window.