OVERVIEW -------- UZPower is a power monitor program designed specifically for power-managed laptop computers running MS Windows (TM) 3.x. Its only function is to constantly monitor the status of the battery, and indicate the remaining charge and warn you when it becomes dangerously low. Many laptop vendors do not bundle this simple feature in their laptops. Instead, they rely on some other mechanism for warning you when the battery charge becomes low, such as blinking lights or LCD displays somewhere on the laptop (usually in a place where you are not looking), or with a pattern of beeps, which either is overridden by the sound drivers that are bundled with other software, or which are easily overheard, and which drain the battery even more. If you have lost work before because you missed these warnings, you'll find this program indispensable. UZPower, simply pops up a warning message when it detects LOW and CRITICAL battery levels, which you have to dismiss to keep working. In addition, UZPower tries to determine remaining battery charge by automatically querying the computer's Advanced Power Management (APM) subsystem. UZPower is only as smart as the APM of your laptop, but if your laptop does not provide this feature, UZPower will try to show an ESTIMATE by guessing from past performance. Once it has an accurate estimate, UZPower constantly shows the remaining battery time on its icon. In a sense, UZPower learns your power usage after running for a while. INSTALLATION ------------ There are many ways to install UZPower, and one simple alternative is to follow these instructions: 1) Make a separate directory (using mkdir from the DOS prompt) and copy the files from your distribution medium (either extract it from a downloaded archive file (PKZIP, LHARC, ZOO, ...), or copy from the diskette) into that directory. It is highly recommended to install into a newly created directory, so that you can easily upgrade or uninstall later. NOTE: if you have a previous version of UZPower, we still recommend installing into a new directory. For example, if you named the old directory UZPOWER, you can rename it to UZPOWER.OLD. After having installed the new software, copy the old license file (eg. UZPOWER.OLD\UZPOWER.LIC ), configuration (UZPOWER.OLD\UZPOWER.CFG) and data file (eg. UZPOWER.OLD\UZPOWER.DAT) to the freshly installed directory. This will save you the time (and cost!) of reregistering the software and keeps your old data. When you are sure that the new revision is working well, you can remove the old version by deleting the directory UZPOWER.OLD. 2) if you have not done so already, create a new program item. You can do this in the Program Manager either by a) dragging the "UZPower" executable file from the File Manager into a program group (consult your Windows manual); or by a) restoring a program group (for example, by double-clicking on its icon); and b) choosing the "File" and "New..." menu entry of the Program Manager. Choose "Program item" and hit "OK". Set its "Description" to "UZPower", its "Command Line" to "uzpower" and its working directory to the directory where you installed the UZPower files. When you are done, the "UZPower" icon should be in the currently selected program group. 3) double-click on the UZPower icon. UZPower is started when its icon shows on the desktop. Once you are sure that UZPower works, you can put it in the "Startup" program group, so that it automatically starts running when Windows begins. To uninstall UZPower in the event you are not going to use it, simply reverse the steps above, that is: 1) stop running the program. 2) remove the program item from any program group that you added it to. 3) remove the files from the directory where you copied them to. USAGE ----- UZPower runs purely as an icon, with 4 additional menu options in its System menu. These options are displayed and selectable when you single-click the left mouse button on its (running) icon. - The "About" menu option displays version and licensing information. - The "Full Now" option allows you to tell UZPower that the battery is full. On laptops whose APM BIOS does not give remaining battery time, UZPower tries to determine full battery charge by making sure you have charged it for at least 2 consecutive hours. Since it may be fairly rare that you will have the laptop turned on for this long while you are charging, you can occasionally use this menu option to give UZPower a hint that the battery is full. UZPower will take it from there to make its estimates of remaining battery power: it will automatically determine the time it takes until the battery goes to LOW level, accounting for suspended periods. NOTE: this option is enabled only in the HIGH battery status. - The "Accurate" / "Inaccurate" / "No Guess" toggling menu entry allows to select the guessing policy of remaining battery life (for systems that do not have the most powerful APM features). A "toggling" menu entry shows you the mode that you can change to (not the mode you are in, unfortunately). In "accurate" mode (which is the default), UZPower guesses at remaining battery time only from known states. This is the recommended policy in the beginning (together with the "Full Now" option above). For example, this mode will only display approximations when you have charged the battery for 2 hours (while UZPower is running). In "inaccurate" mode, UZPower will start guessing more frequently. The guesses are still pretty good. "No guess" means to disable the guessing functionality. This can be used if you don't like the estimates that UZPower displays. - The "Topmost" / "Not topmost" toggling menu entry allows to force the icon to always be visible. The icon indicates current charging status as a power cord, and at-a- glance current battery power status with a gauge that shows either HIGH, LOW or CRITICAL charge. It displays a warning message (which you have to dismiss) when the battery charge becomes LOW or CRITICAL. You usually have 5 minutes of battery life from the LOW power warning, and about 1 minute after the CRITICAL warning, depending on battery usage! In addition, if your APM subsystem has the feature, it will keep track of the remaining battery charge in hours:minutes on its icon. If your APM does not support this, it will try to estimate from past history, and show an approximate remaining time. LIMITATIONS ----------- Microsoft Windows (and Windows for Workgroups) version 3.11 has bugs related to APM, which can cause the computer to hang while running UZPower. The Microsoft Knowledge Base (on CompuServe, GO MSKB, search for APM), contains problems reports that have the same symptoms, and Microsoft admits that they have problems. For this reason, UZPower will pop up a warning message. Before you continue, you should make sure that you don't have any unsaved work. If your computer hangs, complain to Microsoft, and to your vendor. In either case, please let UZful Software know. Since APM is still fairly recent, not all laptops have the most powerful APM features. If UZPower detects that your laptop does not, it will preface any of its estimates with the word "approximate". If you require more accurate predictions, demand from your laptop vendor that they implement the full APM version 1.1 specification. Also, since the APM specification is so recent, some laptops' APM BIOS does not adhere correctly to the APM standards. There is no way to detect all the error cases (except at great cost), only that you'll notice that UZPower will not run as designed (and described above). You can make sure that your laptop has a good chance of working by running the enclosed APMEXAM utility. If while running on battery power (not connected to the outlet) it passes the first 4 items on the checklist as shown in the example in APMEXAM.TXT, it should work. Otherwise, complain to your vendor, if this is important to you. Unfortunately, UZPower can only do meaningful estimates of remaining battery power if the computer has some minimal Advanced Power Management features. If it determines that your computer does not have sufficient APM features, it will pop up an error message with "No Advanced Power Management!". SUPPORT ------- If you are a registered user, UZful Software provides on-line support via e-mail at uzful@mv.mv.com . Before you report a problem, please look at FAQ.TXT. When you report a problem, please include - the version of UZPower that you are running, - the type of PC you have, and - the symptoms of the problem (any special circumstances that make the problem appear? How often does it occur? Can you reproduce the problem?). The more info you provide, the quicker we can fix it (please include the output of APMEXAM in your problem report). If you have additional suggestions on how to make our products even more useful, please drop us a line. UZful Software "We make the useful simple."