BattCursor is a very configurable and thus flexible software. Each
feature can be enabled or disabled easily. Also you can
determine yourself when things should happen. BattCursor offers
a range of events so you can decide what happens and when.
Also you are able to change settings relating to the appearance of features. For example the color of the mouse cursor and the text.
BattCursor offers ways to be informed of the battery level:
The original 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 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 is not visible) it is possible to modify the aero glass color automatically. This happens 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 icon in the system tray area of your taskbar you have an overview about
the most meaningful information like battery level, remaining runtime and status.
Using this icon you have direct access to the 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 replicates 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 regular pc (only about a tenth of the power). The battery in mobile computers often run out of power after a few hours. Therefore even a little energy saving is worth it to squezze that last bit out of your battery.
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 although not as great a potential savings, but it can be disabled in the same manner to get 5-10 minutes more.
You know many newer mobile phones, when pressing no key for a long time the display brightness will be reduced before it turns off. This is very useful, because there are several situations where you don't need the full brightness, for example while getting a new coffee or the short talk with a co-worker.
In these situations BattCursor reduces the brightness of the screen, if you don't use the computer or some time. When you return the previous brightness will be restored. This saves 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 each power plan should be used, without having to do it 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 to keep you informed of several events. You can freely configure which events you will be informed of.
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 electronics BattCursor also shows
technical details about the battery, too. Including battery voltage, current
and power consumption and even more useful information 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 true with BattCursor. Thus you must not continuously search for new versions BattCursor offers a function to search for updates (1x daily).
If updates are available BattCursor notifies you about this. You don't need to 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.
Goodbye Umbraco!
Sad to say, but a great improvement, the battcursor homepage does not use umbraco as cms anymore.
A bit sad news to umbraco, but I have to do this. So much things that went wrong after upgrading ...
Happy "Birthday", BattCursor!
Today is the big day :)
It is exactly 1 year ago since I have had the idea to display the remaining battery power in the cursor. A short time later it was done, the first version of BattCursor ...
~ 1000 ~
YAY, this is the first time a BattCursor version has exceeded 1000 downloads! :D
I want to say a few words because of this:
Thanks to Maximilian which uses this from the first alpha version. ...