Jan 13, 2014 BATExpert is a free Laptop battery monitoring tool from KC Softwares which allows you to check the current status and other details of your laptop battery. The Windows Club Home. Generate Battery Health Report with Power Efficiency Diagnostic Report Tool (PowerCFG) in Windows. Get more battery life out of your laptop by running this Report. Here we have provided the details about free tools for laptop battery monitoring. You can use these tools on your laptop to get battery status in system tray. It is a very straight forward laptop battery monitoring tool which comes in a very cool look where you can see the remaining time and charging/discharging status. BatteryBar is a free tool but the pro version of the same software is not. Download and install the best free apps for Battery Utilities on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android from CNET Download.com, your trusted source for the top software picks.
Active2 years, 3 months ago
I have a personal laptop (Lenovo Z470) at home and what I like about it is that its battery management software has a setting called 'Best Battery Health' which makes the laptop stop charging at 50% battery capacity. It's useful because I used my laptop 8+ hours a day, everyday. Although I total discharge it about once a month.
Now I have a new job and a new laptop was provided me, an Acer Aspire E1-572G. Its battery tool doesn't have that feature, and googling didn't come up with any results.
So do you guys know any software that does the same thing on Acer notebooks? Or if it's not the best practice (to keep the battery at a certain level), what is? I'm asking because I'll be using this laptop the whole day. Any recommendations? Thank you.
PS: I noticed on my Lenovo notebook, when I set it to Best Battery Health then reboot to Ubuntu, the battery threshold remains, so I'm thinking it's not totally a software thing. It may be hardware-related, too, but I don't know. Thanks again.
d4ryl3d4ryl324855 gold badges88 silver badges1919 bronze badges
4 Answers
Short answer:No and no
![Software to test laptop battery Software to test laptop battery](/uploads/1/2/6/3/126303439/809492666.gif)
Long answer:
I was skeptical of this affirmation so I did some research and stumbled with this article. And it brought back vague memories from back when I studied physics about condensers.
Now before we start, I want to point out that to my understanding, saying battery is fully charged makes just as much sense as saying a balloon is fully charged; this limit is too extreme since it's where it's the limit where it explodes. So the battery is never fully charged.
Give this graph I found a look: It's very descriptive.
When connecting the battery to a specific voltage by using your charger, the charge behaves as you can see in the graph over time. It charges the battery quick first and then slower until it reaches a point it will charge so slow we don't consider it charging anymore. This is probably the moment your laptop says battery 100%.
If you charged the battery using a higher voltage, you'd raise this limit, the battery would charge faster and it would have a longer discharge duration at the expense of making the battery 'suffer' and hence reduce its life. Too much voltage and KABOOM BABY!
On the other hand, if you use a lower voltage to charge the battery, it would take the same time to charge it to... let's say 50% of last scenario (and it would be limited there), so you'd have less juice through the day but the life of the battery would be prolonged. I bet your laptop would also state the battery is at 100%, even though it now has half the charge as before.
You could also 'fast charge' it to that 50% using that higher voltage, but that's going to make the battery 'suffer' as well.Back to the first article, I found there this other graph as well:
So in conclusion, you shouldn't focus on charging your battery less to improve its life, but to charge it slower by reducing the voltage (which will put a limit to how charged it gets hence charging it less).
But on the other hand all new batteries probably have internal mechanisms which regulate all of this so you don't even need to think about it.
Oh, and about programs to limit this; it MUST be supported by acer from the BIOS. If it isn't around, then it's probably just not supported.
brunch875brunch875
Many users do not use their notebooks too often on the go, and they are plugged to AC nearly all the time, keeping the battery charged at 100%. This is the worst mode of operation for ANY lithium-based battery.
My friend's HP Probook 4535s has a Windows utility which allows to specify the charge limit to 50%, 70% or 100%. They say 50% is for maximum battery lifespan, 100% is highest single-charge run time and 70% is good compromise. I wish there would be such a possibility for Acer Aspire.
For now, I normally let the battery charge to about 50% (which is an ideal state of charge for Li-based batteries) and remove it from the laptop. When needed, I just put it there and it charges to 100% in about an hour, which is acceptable in most cases. And when not, I still have those 2 hours at 50% which is sufficient for most of my on-the-go activities.
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matejmatej
Keeping a battery at a maximum of around 3.9v avoids stress induced capacity losses. So I charge my battery to 50 percent and take it out. When I want to go out or wander around the house I pop the battery back in. Once every 6 months I give the battery a full cycle. 3 years later its still giving me 2 hours runtime on a huge acer 8930g.
Keeping your battery in a hot laptop fully charged is killing it badly. After 1 year it may lose 30-50 percent capacity.
Dan ParsonsDan Parsons
Laptop Battery Software Free
I have a Lenovo that is not capable of controlling charge level to other than 100%. (I understand that the Thinkpad line can do this but I have an Ideapad.)
I use a WiFi programmable socket which can be operated by software on the laptop. I have a script that runs every 5 minutes and when the battery charge is over 70% it turns the socket off. When battery charge is below 30% it turns the socket back on. (Charger plugged into socket, of course.) After several years the battery capacity on this laptop is holding up better than previous laptops which were allowed to charge to 100% and left on charge nearly indefinitely.
HankBHankB
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Laptop Battery Software Tools Download
Laptop batteries are expensive pieces of equipment, so if you have an old laptop that still works fine, who wants to shell out upwards of $100 to replace the battery right!? Luckily, there are a lot of ways, some technical, some interesting and some strange ones, that people have come up with to restore dying batteries on laptops.
In this article, I’m going to try to list out all the different ones I’ve read about and if I can remember where I read it, I’ll link back to the original source. If you have tried to restore a laptop battery yourself, let us know your method in the comments.
Method 1 – The Freezing Method
I once saw a movie where a guys’ phone was about to die, so he took out the battery and stuck in some snow, which apparently made it last longer! I still don’t know if that’s true or not, but apparently you can freeze a laptop battery and get more juice out of it. Here’s the procedure very succinctly:
Step 1: Take your battery out and place it in a sealed Ziploc or plastic bag.
Step 2: Go ahead and put the bag into your freezer and leave it there for about 12 hours. Some people suggest leaving it for longer, but I wouldn’t leave it for more than 24 hours.
Step 3: Once you take it out, remove the plastic bag and let the battery warm up until it reaches room temperature. Be sure to wrap it in a towel and wipe away any condensation as it warms up.
Step 4: Reinsert the laptop battery and charge it completely.
Step 5: Once charged, unplug the power and let the battery drain all the way down.
Now repeat steps 4 and 5 at least 4 times: charge all the way to full, then discharge completely. That should be it! Unless your battery is leaking acid, you should get some kind of bump in the battery life.
Note that you should only perform this on NiCD or NiMH batteries. If you try this on a lithium battery, it’ll make the battery life worse. Unfortunately, there is no way to restore a lithium battery. You’ll have to find your laptop specs to see what kind of battery you have. For lithium ion batteries, you can’t restore, but you can possibly extend the life of a battery. Read method 2.
Method 2 – Cool Your Computer
If you have a lithium ion based battery, you can increase it’s life by making sure your laptop is cool. If you have a laptop that gets really hot, it can damage the battery and cause the shortness in battery life. I have an old Sony VAIO laptop and I saw a significant increase in laptop battery life when I bought a laptop cooling pad off Amazon. You can get one like this for $20.
You may think your battery is on it’s last leg, but it could simply be that it’s getting too warm and therefore loses charge faster.
Method 3 – Recalibrate Your Battery
With most newer batteries, this is no longer necessary, but if your battery is dying, then it’s probably a pretty old battery. In that case, you may benefit from a recalibration. Recalibrating a battery is done because sometimes the operating system cannot figure out how much capacity is left in the battery. This can happen if the laptop is always plugged in or if the battery was never let to die all the way.
You can tell whether your battery needs calibration if your battery never charges to 100% (say only to 95%) or if the OS says you have 35 min of battery remaining, but the computer dies either much sooner or much later. A lot of manufacturers have released calibration tools for specific laptop models, so first perform a Google search with your computer model + battery calibration. Here’s an example tool from Sony.
If you have to manually recalibrate a battery, the procedure is pretty straight-forward:
Step 1: Charge your battery to 100% or to whatever max percentage it can reach and leave it there for about 2 hours to cool down.
Step 2: Now disconnect the power and let the battery drain. There seems to be two views about how to do this. You can either let the battery run down all the way until the laptop dies or you can set it so that it goes to sleep or hibernates around 3 to 5%. Either way, you want to make sure the display stays on until it either dies or goes to sleep.
Step 3: Let the computer remain turned off for anywhere between 3 to 5 hours.
Step 4: Turn it back on and let it charge all the way to 100%.
That’s pretty much it. Now the computer should be giving you a more accurate reading of the actual capacity of the battery.
Method 4 – Remove Battery When Plugged In
If you have a laptop with a removable battery, you can try to remove the battery during the times you have it plugged into the wall. You may have to test this because some laptops don’t work properly with the battery removed. However, if the laptop is running fine and it’s connected to a power source all the time, it may help to simply remove the battery.
The chemical reactions will continue to occur in the battery regardless of whether or not it’s in the laptop, but it could increase the life of the battery. Since the battery is cool and not hot when plugged in, you’ll get more life out of your battery.
Of course, you’ll need to make sure you’re not living in an area where the power goes out because your computer will die immediately and you’ll lose any data. This method is also time-consuming and annoying and something most people won’t do. The last method below may be the best.
Method 5 – Unplug at Full Battery
The last option you can try is to let the battery charge to 100% and then simply unplug the computer. When it gets close to dying, i.e. less than 5%, go ahead and plug it in and let it charge up. However, this could reduce battery life on newer lithium ion batteries, so for those batteries it’s suggested you only let the battery level drop to 35% to 45% and then charge it back up to 75% to 85%. Sounds crazy, but apparently that will give you the best battery life because it won’t use up as many charge and recharge cycles.
Again, this method also requires a bit of work, but it’s worth a try if you really want to increase your battery life. Have you used any other methods not mentioned here to increase your laptop battery life? If so, let us know in the comments. Enjoy!