You may not give much thought to your laptop battery, until it fails. Did you know Windows 7 now has a built in tool to give your battery a checkup? This utility will give you information such as charge capacity (compare to its original state) and what programs are using your computer's resources. Here are the simple steps to use this tool:
- Click your Windows Orb (start menu icon)
- Type cmd in the search box
- In the results, you should see the program for cmd (dos prompt). Right-click its icon and choose Run as administrator
- In the new command prompt window that appears, type powercfg -energy
Hit Enter and it will begin to process. When complete, the utility will list the number of items it found. It will also display the path to view the complete report. It will likely be similar to "c:\windows\system32\energy-report.html". There you will be able to view all the dirty details of your battery and its usage.
