You may remember a few days ago the Propellerhead Top Tip for prolonging the active lives of laptop batteries by maintaining at least 40 to 50% charge. In practice keeping tabs on a battery pack’s state of charge can be quite difficult. You have to ‘hover’ the mouse over the Windows battery meter in the System Tray, and the proprietary battery meters supplied with some laptops vary from quite good to awful.

This alternative battery meter, called Power Meter Plus takes all the guesswork out of it. The charge level is displayed as bargraph on the right or left side of the screen, and it gradually appears, as the charge drops, so it’s difficult to ignore.

This comes from Propellerhead’s Trivia Department, but it’s worth remembering, if Windows tell you off, or stops you doing something, without telling you why. There are a number of little-known restrictions on characters and names that you are allowed to use when naming folders or files.

Most of the restrictions hark back to the olden days of DOS and UNIX, and quite honestly the chances of you wanting to use any of them are fairly remote, but here goes.

The characters that you are not allowed to use in folder or filenames are:  \ / : * ? " < > |, and if you try Windows will bleep at you.

The following is a list of names that you are not allowed to use: CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9.

This time Windows will let you enter the name but as soon as you press Return it will revert to its former name.

In case you are wondering what the strange spidery image on the left is, it’s Propellerhead, or at least that’s how it looks to Websites as Graphs.

Simply type in the URL of a website and it converts it into a graphical representation, displaying all of the various elements as interlinked colour coded dots. Blue dots represent links, Red is for tables, violet is for images, yellow for forms, black for the Root node and so on.

Thanks to some unfortunate manufacturing flaws laptop batteries have been in the news recently, however, for the most part these unsung heroes of portable computing lead rather dull and uneventful lives, until they start to wear out (or catch fire…). The fact is the Lithium Ion (Li-ion) battery packs used in most laptops, and pretty well all portable widgets these days, are by their very nature self-destructive and start to deteriorate from the day they roll off the production line, almost regardless of how many times they are charged.

They’re expensive to replace so it makes sense to look after them so here’s a couple of tips from Propellerhead. The number one Li-ion killer is heat. For example, a well maintained Li-ion battery pack, stored and used at a chilly 0 degrees centigrade would only lose 2% of its capacity in the first year and 6% in year two. In the real world a battery used and stored at 20 to 25 degrees loses just 4 percent of capacity in year one but this leaps to 20% in the second year and subsequent years.

Deep discharging (i.e. constantly running the battery flat) also shortens their lives and as few as 100 deep charge/discharge cycles can reduce a Li-ion pack’s capacity by as much as 75 percent.

You may have noticed that larger screens and higher resolutions can make things harder to read. One of the more obvious problems is typing in web addresses in Internet Explorer; the text is so small that it’s easy to make mistakes and difficult to spot them afterwards.

This quick and simple tip from Propellerhead should help, it increases the size text in the IE Address box and the text-entry/display fields and Explorer boxes in other MS and Windows programs as well. Simply go to Display Properties (right-click an empty area of the Desktop and click Properties) select the Appearance tab and click the Advanced button. In the Item drop-down menu select Icon, now you can change the display font and size.

No doubt it will happen one day but we’ve been down the free energy route several times before, remember cold fusion and electricity generated by nuclear power that would be too cheap to meter? Anyway, this might be the one, Dublin based technology company Steorn claims it has developed a source of free, clean and constant energy, usable for everything from recharging mobile phones and laptop batteries to powering cars.

Steorn is being fairly cagey about how it all works -- magnetism seems to play a fairly important role in this physical law violating technology -- but CEO Sean McCarthy, pictured with a test rig, has issued a challenge to scientists to test its revolutionary technology and so far more than 1200 of them have accepted it, and you want to be one of the first to know the outcome sign up to receive the results by email

One of the Windows Explorer’s many small and niggling annoyances is the way it displays the size of a file, but not the size of a folder, which is handy to know if you are looking for the programs and files that are gobbling up your hard disc space.

This little utility found by Propellerhead, called appropriately enough Foldersize, sets things straight, in Windows Explorer’s Details view just right-click on the column title bar, select Folder Size from the drop-down menu and the new column will appear, with the amount of disc space both folders and files occupy clearly displayed. This makes the standard File Size column redundant so if you want to get rid of it right-click on the title bar again and uncheck ‘Size’.

There are plenty of websites that test the speed of your web connection but few of them look as good or are as easy to use as the one Propellerhead has been road-testing at Speedtest.net. The dashboard design is really sharp and it’s highly configurable. Just click on your Server location and the test begins, it’s fascinating to watch and only takes around half a minute.

For the most part the title bar at the top of most Windows applications is just a waste of space, with just the name of the program on the left, the Minimise, Maximise and Close icons on the right and nothing much else in between.

Here’s a nifty little freeware program found by Propellerhead that makes good use of some of that wasted space. It’s called TitleBarClock and it really is tiny (the zip file is just 61kb) and once installed it inserts the time (12 or 24 hour format), date, day of the week and how much free HDD memory you have on the left of any active title bar that has mouse or keyboard focus.

Many years ago, when Propellerhead used to get his hands dirty making bits of televisions for Ferguson, two of the most useful analytical and diagnostic tools at his disposal were an oscilloscope and spectrum analyser.

‘Scopes and speccy analysers are marvellous bits of kit, used to display all kinds of waveforms and signals and back then they cost a small fortune. They still do, but here’s a way of turning your PC into a surprisingly accurate oscilloscope, spectrum analyser, frequency meter and waveform generator, and it won’t cost you a bean.

Visual Analyser is a freeware program that monitors the audio coming into and going out of your PC and displays the results on your monitor screen in a very fair representation of proper stand-alone test instruments.

In the coming months you will be hearing a lot about Windows Vista’s fancy graphical interface, originally called ‘Aeroglass’ now just plain Aero, and the rumours are mostly true. It looks great and is a lot of fun to play with (and Mac fans can stop sniggering, yes, I know you’ve seen it all before…) but for Windows users it will be a revelation.

One of the most visually impressive features -- and quite useful too -- is 3D Flip. This works a bit like the Alt -Tab ‘Task Switcher’ in previous versions of Windows (and that still works, and it looks a whole lot prettier with thumbnail views of open programs). But back to 3D Flip, and this works when you press Winkey + Tab. Open Applications are presented as large ‘live’ thumbnail views, in 3D.

If like Propellerhead you have a growing collection of flash memory devices, be they USB memory sticks, MP3 players and so on, then Uncle Bill has come up with a way for you to keep tabs on them all and make it easier for you to use them for backing up important files. It’s called the USB Flash Drive Manager and it’s all free. From the simple to use tabbed interface you can copy files, backup or restore files, check and modify your drive’s properties, manage file libraries and configure your PC’s USB drive settings.

Run on the Start menu can be a real nuisance for those who share their PCs with others. Tinkering causes so many computer problems, and there’s no quicker way to foul up a PC than mess with System Files or the Registry, all of which can be accessed through tools and utilities that launch from the Run command, so hide it! 

It’s really easy using this simple tip from Propellerhead, just right click on the Start button and select Properties then the Task Bar tab and click the Customize button, followed by the Advanced tab.

If you use Microsoft Word then you may be aware of the Comment facility that lets you add helpful notes to your documents, but you may not have spotted a little extra facility Propellerhead has unearthed for embedding ‘spoken’ comments.

It’s really easy to do and all you need is a microphone connected to your PC. Open your document and click the mouse on the spot where you want the Comment to appear, now go to Insert > Comment and on the split frame toolbar that appears beneath your document, click the tape cassette icon. (In later versions of Word go to Insert > Comment and select Voice Comment from the drop-down menu). This opens the Windows Sound Recorder utility, click the Record button, say your piece and press Stop.

There are few things more aggravating than a dead or ‘hot’ (permanently lit) pixel on an LCD screen. The trouble is some manufacturers seem to think a few dicky pixels are okay, provided they’re not too close to the centre of the screen, and will refuse to replace it.

If you are buying a new screen it’s worth checking the small print in the manufacturer and vendor’s terms and conditions for the low-down on duff pixels. Even if there is a get out clause and you are lumbered with a screen that you consider to defective it’s still worth complaining as some vendors and manufacturers are more reasonable than others.

If they won’t take it back then Propellerhead has a few things you can try to fix a hot (though not a dead or blacked out) pixel. In practice the success rate is quite low but you might get lucky and what have you got to lose?

Gentle massage has proved successful in a few cases. The rather dubious theory is that light pressure around the defective pixel forces the liquid crystals back into their little pockets.  Apparently the trick is to switch the screen off, rub the area using a soft cloth, then after a few seconds switch the screen back on. Another wheeze is to gently tap the area, it also sounds a bit optimistic but who knows? Just be very careful not to tap too hard or you’ll have a few million more dead pixels on your hands…

The last two methods are a lot safer and involve switching the pixels on and off really fast, presumably in an attempt to reset or switch the faulty pixel back to its normal working state. My favourite is a little freeware utility program called Dead Pixel Tester or DPT, which in addition to a Pixel ‘Exerciser’ facility also has a number of useful and rather funky test patterns and screens that can help you to find faulty pixels.

Global warming, energy crisis, carbon taxes; these are difficult times for the planet, so how much is your PC and laptop contributing to the problem and how much do they cost to run?

You might be surprised. According to Propellerhead’s back of a fag packet calculations a typical desktop machine and LCD monitor consumes around 300 watts, so if used for 10 hours a day that would set you back in the region of £10 a month or around £120 a year. That probably doesn’t sound too bad but if you are using a CRT monitor you can easily add another fiver a month to the cost. In fact it’s worth chucking it out as switching to an LCD, which has around half the power consumption, can pay for itself in around 3 to 5 years in saved energy costs alone.

Laptops are quite frugal compared to desktops and assuming that you power and charge it from your home supply an average laptop, used for five hours a day will consume around £20 to £30’s worth of electricity a year.

Of course switching your machine off when it’s not going to being used for any length of time is always a good idea, though too many on/off cycles throughout the day can reduce the life of some components. There are savings to be had by configuring your PC’s power profile to shut down hard drives and the monitor after a period of inactivity that fits in with your working patterns.

When you come to replace your PC don’t just chuck it in the bin. If it’s a runner recycle; there are plenty of organisations that might be interested in your machine, provided it has a reasonably up to date spec, or you could keep it as a spare, or use it as a file server. If it’s dead then take it to the recycling point at your local amenity tip but either way, before you and your old PC part company wipe or remove the hard drive.

If you are curious about which appliances in your home are racking up the bills then why not invest in a wattage meter? There’re readily available from electrical and electronics stores for between £15 and £30; in fact Maplin has one right now on special offer for £12.50.

Time for a quick break from the teccy stuff and thanks to Peugeot Propellerhead has just wasted the best part of an hour struggling with an infuriating little website game. It’s all linked to a promotion for the Peugeot 107, but it’s okay, you don’t have to buy one to play. The game is called Parking Perfection and as the name implies it involves parking a 107 in a number of designated spaces. It’s pretty straightforward and you use the keyboard cursor keys to control steering and forward and reverse motion

Here’s a weird little feature Propellerhead has been playing around with in Microsoft Word, that you may not have come across before. It’s a way to create a highly configurable single and multi row table. It’s different to the Create and Draw Table tools on the Table menu (or the Toolbar Insert Table icon) in that each cell can be as little as one character wide. All you have to do is type the plus symbol (‘+’) followed by one or more hyphens (‘-‘), followed by another plus sign. Repeat for as many columns as you require, then press Enter. So, for example, a five-column table would look like this:

+-+-+-+-+-+

and produce this:        

Adding extra hyphens between the plus signs varies the cell spacing, so this:

+-+--+---+----+-----+

produces this:

If you want to add extra rows place the cursor at the end of the table and press Tab or Enter as many times as necessary.

Word Count has to be one of Word’s most frequently used functions, so why on earth has Microsoft made it so hard to get at? Propellerhead has come up with three ways to make it more accessible. If you are using Word 2002 or later then you can put a Word count button on the toolbar simply by going to View > Toolbars then click on Word Count and drag the icon to create a floating toolbar that you can embed with  the others at the top of the screen.

In earlier versions of Word right click on an empty area of the toolbar and select Customize then the Commands tab and in the Categories list select Tools. In the right hand Commands window scroll down to Word Count then drag and drop the icon onto the Toolbar. You can rename the button and change the icon while the Customize dialogue box is open by right clicking on it.

Although Google’s Picasa has pretty much sewn up the free image viewer market, it is fairly obvious that this once lithe and nimble utility is fast putting on the middle-age spread as more features and facilities are added. Propellerhead is still a big Picasa fan but if all you want is a decent image viewer that shows you exactly what’s on your PC, in double quick time and without having to wade through the frills and fripperies then take a look at FastStone.

The latest freeware beta is now available for download and in addition to fast image browsing it has a number of editing functions, including a nifty full-screen mode with hidden toolbars, image comparison, red-eye removal, resizing, cropping, colour adjustment, emailing.