Battery Meter

Free download: Installer for version 1.02 (including license key valid through 31 December 2009)

Current license key: 80070840800891708744 (valid through 31 December 2009).

If you find this program useful, please consider clicking on the button to the left to donate two dollars.

Reason for existence: The standard Windows XP battery meter has two major shortcomings: it does not display the time estimate unless the mouse cursor is hovered over the system tray icon in the taskbar, and furthermore, that icon has too few states - it looks exactly the same whether the battery status is 25% or 3%.

Features:

• Always-on-top, translucent graphical indicator.
• Completely transparent background: all you see is the power bar and the numeric displays.
• Displays both the percentage battery remaining and an estimate of the time left.
• Can be used during a full screen PowerPoint or Acrobat presentation.
• Automatic detection of background color: light or dark drawing colors are automatically selected.
• All colors fully configurable via user-friendly Windows color picker.

License status: This program is currently being distributed for free, because the author neither has the time, means, or patience to market it. However, to protect the author's rights in the event that he should decide to commercialize the program at a later date, this program requires a license key in order to run. Keys will expire about every 3 months, and users will be prompted to enter the next license key in order to proceed. These keys will be made freely available on this website. Also, redistribution of this program (in any form) is not permitted.

System requirements:

• Windows XP.
• .NET Framework version 2.0 (or above). This Windows component may already be installed on your system because other applications may use it too (this is somewhat analogous to how DirectX is used by many computer games). It can be obtained for free via Windows Update by selecting to install "Custom" updates and looking in the "Optional Software" section. Alternatively, one can download the Framework directly from Microsoft. Note: if you receive an error message about "MSCOREE.DLL", this indicates that you do not have the .NET Framework installed.

(Brief) instructions:

• To exit or configure Battery Meter, double-click on its system tray icon (a colored sphere) to access the control window.
• The meter can be moved by dragging the colored bar with the mouse pointer.
• To automatically start Battery Meter upon logging into Windows, run the corresponding program in Battery Meter's Start Menu group.

Remark: Battery Meter was inspired by a similar project by Matt Collinge, Power Meter Plus. The two projects do not share any code though.

  
Battery meter floating transparently above the desktop, indicating a charge level of 79% which is estimated to last 2hr 52min. The system tray icon for Battery Meter is the green sphere.

  
Over a light background, Battery Meter's colors automatically darken to maintain visibility. Also, the colors of the bar and the system tray icon have changed to reflect a moderate battery level. No time estimate is provided because the battery is charging.