BattCursor.Net

General

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.

Show energy

BattCursor offers ways to be informed of the battery level:

Mouse cursor

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.

Sidebar

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)

Aero Glass

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.

System-Tray

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.

Save energy

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.

Disable features

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.

Reduce display brightness

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.)

Use power profiles

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.

Keep informed

BattCursor helps to keep you informed of several events. You can freely configure which events you will be informed of.

On Screen Display

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.

Notifications

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.

Battery information

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).

Automatic Updates

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.