Battery Health Monitor 1.2 Mini-Review [UPDATED with version 1.3 Release Notes]
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Here is Battery Health Monitor's report on the battery in my 17" PowerBook.
Parameters monitored include:
Original Capacity
• An indication of the original, rated storage capacity of the battery. when it was new
Current Capacity
• Indicates the storage capacity of the battery at this time. As the battery ages the current capacity will gradually drop from the original capacity.
Current Charge
• Shows the battery's current charge state
Charge Cycles
• Indicates how many complete charge/discharge cycles the battery has experienced. The percentage value indicates approximately what portion of the number of total recharge cycles the battery supports have been used. Batteries can only be recharged a finite number of times, so the percent value for charge cycles indicates approximately how much of the battery’s life as been consumed. As you can see, I don't run the battery in my 17" PowerBook flat very often.
Voltage
• The voltage at the battery terminals.
Next to the Current Capacity, Current Charge, and Charge Cycles values are bar graphs that show the values graphically.
The top of the Battery Health Monitor window displays the status of eight individual parameters (annunciators) retrieved from the computer’s Power Manager:
• A/C Power indicates that the computer is attached to external power.
• UPS Installed indicates that an Uninterruptible Power Supply has been detected.
• Battery Installed indicates that one or more batteries are in the computer.
• Battery Low Warn indicates that the Power Manager has issued a low power warning.
• Battery Charging indicates that one or more batteries are being charged.
• Battery Depleted indicates that the battery is drained.
• Raw Battery Low indicates that the battery is reporting only reserve power available.
• Not Chargeable indicates that the battery(s) installed cannot be charged.
Note that if you have an aftermarket replacement battery rather than an Apple OEM unit, Battery Health Monitor may not be able to check it. For example, the fully-charged FastMac TruePower Extended Life Battery in my Pismo PowerBook is interpreted by the program as being dead and the capacities do not read out.
New in version 1.3:
• Universal binary--PowerPC & Intel native.
• Updated to support changes in Apple's Battery Update 1.1.
• Optimized internal processing for improved performance.
New in version 1.2:
• Reduced processor loading for PowerPC G3 and G4 Macs.
• Corrected a problem with the "Battery Life Remaining" graph.
System requirements:
PowerBook G3 or later, or iBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook
requires Mac OS X (10.1 or later).
System Support:
PPC/Intel
Free
For more information, visit:
http://www.sonoragraphics.com/batteryhealth.html
