One thing that really annoys me about my current laptop is battery life, it’s about 4 minutes. Caused by serious abuse of the charge / recharge cycle. I’ll be replacing it soon, probably with the HP Tx2 that Ian reviewed rescently.
However it’s good to know how seriously bad the battery is, and James O’Neill rescently posted a great tip on how to find out in Windows 7. Here is the sorry state of my battery:
Battery:Battery Information
| Battery ID | SIMPLOMAL32b |
| Manufacturer | SIMPLO |
| Serial Number | |
| Chemistry | LION |
| Long Term | 1 |
| Design Capacity | 51840 |
| Last Full Charge |
4493 |
The important thing is the difference between Design Capacity and the last full charge (it’s in ma/h) no wonder it only lasts for 4 minutes!
Even more handily though from a Media Center perspective this tool can tell you which devices are stopping the PC from going into Standby. Just generate the report and have a read through.
Posted by Simon May, follow me on Twitter or if you like email me 
I never have a problem getting my media center to go to sleep. My biggest issue is random processes waking it up. Any tools to monitor why that is?