BattCursor.Net
Official homepage of that tool for Vista laptops
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BattCursor is a very good configurable and thus flexible software. Each
feature can free discretion Aktiviert-or disabled are. Also you can
determine to yourself when what should happen. BattCursor offers
for each function a user-friendly range of events to when what
you want.
Also you are able to change the appearance of functions on demand, for example the color of the mouse cursor and the text as you like it.
To keep this list clearly this is not mentioned for each feature again.
BattCursor offers you different ways, how to be informed about about the battery level:
The main idea of BattCursor was it, as you may guess by the name, to display
the remaining battery level directly under the mouse cursor. Of course this has
not changed. Also the cursor color will be changed dependent on energy level.
New in Windows Vista is the sidebar, a feature to display (more or less meaningful) Gadgets. Admitted BattCursor is no sidebar gadget, but it can if desired, simulate it. This graphic shows a battery based on which you can see the State of your battery. It can also show advanced information, such as remaining run-time, battery voltage and power.
Sidebar "overlay" on different energy levels (together with activated aero glass colorize feature)
For particularly critical moments (where the mouse pointer or sidebar are not visible) it is possible to modify the aero glass color automatically. This becomes once the battery is on low power yellow, at critical red.
Note: This feature uses undocumented features of Windows Vista or Windows 7. This means that this feature may not work on untested Windows and service pack versions. We strive to keep this feature active as long as possible.
Using a symbol in the system tray area of your taskbar you have an overview about
the most meaningful informations like battery level, remaining runtime and status.
Using this symbol you have direct access to different features. Here you can disable
windows features like aero glass and the sidebar, change and manage power profiles and
configure battcursor itself.
Because this symbol provides each feature the windows energy symbol also has, we have created a tutorial about how to disable the windows energy symbol. You can find this in the support pages.
Many people don't know that a laptop needs much less power than a regulary pc (only about a tenth of the power). Anyways the battery in mobile computers often runs out of power after a few hours. Therefore it is worth to save even a little energy to get more run-time.
BattCursor can help you to disable unneeded functions. For example the Aero Glass can be automatically disabled in battery mode (optionally) or on low power. This can save, depending on what the computer is used for, up to 20-30 minutes run-time. (measured on a MSI VR601 during video playback).
The Windows Sidebar provides although not so great savings potential, but it can be disabled in the same manner to get 5-10 minutes more time.
You know it from many newer mobile phones, when pressing no key for longer time the display brightness will be reduced before it turns off. This is very useful, because there are serveral situations where you don't need the full brightness, for example while getting a new coffee or the short talk with a coworker.
In this situations BattCursor reduces the brightness of the screen, if you don't use the computer sor some time. When you return the previous brightness will be restored. This saves during this about 20% of energy. (This value will strongly increase on laptops with larger displays, the test system has only a 15.4" screen.)
BattCursor allows you to manage the Windows power plans automatically. So you can freely define when which power plan should be used, without to do this by yourself. For example, automatically switch to "high performance" if your computer is connected to a power source, and to "balanced" if running on battery and to "Max power saving" if battery runs low.
BattCursor helps you to be informed on serveral events. You can freely configure on which events you will be informed about.
On events like changing the display brightness or the system volume an on screen
display (OSD) can be shown. This will display what has happen together with the new value.
With this BattCursor can replace some OEM softwares completely.
There are various events available where you can enable a notification
for it, for example if BattCursor switches any function automatically,
when the mode (battery / AC power) changes and much more. These
notifications will be shown in system tray area of your taskbar.
More for people that are familiar with electronic BattCursor also shows
technical details about the battery, too. Including battery voltage, current
and power consumption even more useful informations are displayed. You
can also determine how vital your battery is, how much of the capacity is
still available against the manufactured capacity (battery health).
Good software is developed continuously. It is also with BattCursor. Thus you must not continuously search for new versions BattCursor offers also a function to search for updates (1x daily).
If updates are updates BattCursor notifies you about this. You must not uninstall BattCursor for this and then install again, but follow just the steps of the updater and about a minute later you are back up to date.
