How to Detect battery status in windows 7 with BattCursor

If you do a lot of work on your laptop or when you are away from your home, the battery life is always the cause of the worry to the user. The user always remains anxious about how much battery is left and how much work can be done on the laptop.

Windows 7 provides the solution to it. Battcursor feature in the latest Windows 7 feature keeps the track of the battery life and keep the user aware of the battery status. Its power saving functions are quite impressive. Though it is a little program but offers many useful features.

The tool includes indicator to the cursor. The cursor itself turns into a floating battery meter and whenever the battery power is low, the percentage and the visual indicator will be displayed. Aero Glass style feature allows you to set BattCursor to show Windows title bar which itself alters the color to warn you when your battery is low.

The title bars will give the blue color if the battery is full or nearly full and if your laptop is running out of battery the spectrum will shift to the warning colors. By default it displays yellow for low and red for critical. You can also modify the colors and activate the Power profiles as the battery diminishes.

To keep the user aware, BattCursor also shows the current charge level. It also allows you to disable the Aero Glass and Windows Sidebar when certain level is attained by the battery to extract more life out of the battery. Power Profiles in Windows 7 can be automatically switched with the BattCursor. Once you enable the function, at the specified charge level your system will be changed from high performance to balanced to power saver.

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ReadyBoost: A way to speed up Windows 7

Microsoft has included an enhanced version of ReadyBoost on Windows 7, a new feature that speeds up your computer even in a low memory situation by using flash memory, in its latest operating system Windows 7, scheduled to be launched on October 22.

ReadyBoost, which also comes with Vista, make use of a USB flash drive or card as memory and it works with most of the flash storage devices.

In Windows 7, it can handle more flash memory and even multiple devices up to eight, for a maximum 256GB of additional memory. When you plug a ReadyBoost-compatible storage device into your system, the AutoPlay dialog box offers you the option to speed up your computer using ReadyBoost. If you select this option, you can choose how much memory on the device to use for this purpose.

When you set up a device to work with ReadyBoost, Windows shows you the space recommended for an optimal performance. For ReadyBoost to effectively speed up your computer, the flash drive or memory card should have at least 1GB of available space. If enough space is not available for ReadyBoost, you’ll see a message asking you to free some space on the device if you want to use it to speed up your system. You can enable or disable ReadyBoost for a specific flash drive or other removable storage device.

Follow the given guidelines to enable this feature in Windows 7 :

STEP1: Connect a flash drive or flash memory card into your computer.

STEP2: Click Speed up my system, in the Autoplay dialog box, under General options.

STEP3: In the Properties dialog box, click the ReadyBoost tab, and then do one of the following:

To turn ReadyBoost off, click Do not use this device.

To use the maximum available space on the flash drive or memory card for ReadyBoost, click Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost. Windows will leave any files already stored on the device, but it will use the rest to boost your system speed.

To use less than the maximum available space on the device for ReadyBoost, click Use this device, and then move the slider to choose the amount of available space on the device you want to use.

STEP4: Click OK.

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Windows 7 Boots Slower than Vista, Says Study

Microsoft new Windows 7 operating system boots slower than his beloved predecessor, Windows Vista, a PC tune-developer, said today.

Claims by iolo Technologies, a Los Angeles manufacturer of PC software, in violation of Microsoft boasts that Windows 7 starts faster than Vista.

According to the evidence iolo, Windows 7 starts, 42% slower than Vista - one minute and 34 seconds versus a minute, six seconds - in a new machine when the time trials are conducted, to the point where the machine is Use at least by the standards of Iolo.

Windows 7 seems to start faster than Vista, said iolo, with its time-to-the-desktop as few as 40 seconds. But starting iolo measured as the point where the team is "fully usable", with a low load on the processor.

Microsoft has said that it's dedicated significant resources to that Windows 7 boot, and standby and hibernation state, faster than Vista, which has been criticized since 2007 to start slowly.

Other tests, iolo, however, have echoed, and showed that in some cases, Windows 7 does not start slower than Vista. PC World, a sister publication Computerworld, for example, benchmark the new operating system as a starting point to 10% slower than when comparing Vista 32-bit versions of the two, but was 14% faster in 64 -bit.

iolo also said that evidence suggests that Windows 7 boot times, such as Vista, will degrade over time. After several "common use" applications have been installed in a new box of Windows 7, for example, your boot time - again, as measured by the company - slows to two minutes, 34 seconds, an increase of 64 %.

For a more extended period, is to get Windows 7 boot times slower than that: At the end of two years simulated Windows 7 boot times increased over 330%.

The boot times have become a hot topic. Last week, the Chinese computer maker Lenovo said its new ThinkPad notebooks and ThinkCentre desktops Windows 7 boot faster than 56% when loading XP or Vista with the operating system, drivers and power management settings did.

iolo said it will give more details and results of its Windows 7 boot time benchmarks on Monday.

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