Kerry Wan/ZDNET
Over the years, Windows PCs have gotten considerably more capable of squeezing a full day of work out of a laptop battery, but there's still a certain level of anxiety that comes with disconnecting from a fixed power source. That's especially true if you have an older PC that's lost some of its battery capacity with age.
Also: Your complete Windows 11 upgrade guide: Everything to know - before you ditch Windows 10
Reducing battery anxiety doesn't require drugs or meditation. All you need is knowledge about how your PC and Windows work together. The tools you need are all included with your Windows installation. Some are available as part of the Windows Settings app, but the most important one is the Power Settings Command-Line Tool, Powercfg.exe. With the right command-line switches, you can use this tool to gather an impressive amount of information about your PC's power usage.
This article assumes you're using a portable PC that meets the Windows 11 hardware compatibility requirements, with a processor that's capable of entering the Modern Standby state, running a recent Windows 11 release. With those criteria satisfied, all of the following steps should work just fine.
1. Create and save a battery report
Before you do anything else, use the Power Settings tool to generate a detailed report showing information about your PC's battery usage over time. This information is saved as an HTML document that you can view in any web browser.
Each battery report includes both tables and charts showing recent usage, usage history, battery capacity over time, and battery life estimates. You don't need deep technical skills to gather useful information from this report.
Start by opening a Command Prompt session. Press Windows key + R to open the Run dialog box, type cmd, and press Enter. Then, in the Command Prompt window, type the following commands, pressing Enter after each one (be sure to include the space between each command and the argument or switch that follows it):
cd %temp% powercfg /batteryreport
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