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Update: Review modified on April 2nd, some changes because of version 2.4 needed to be addressed. These changes are in green. (the same as this line of text) 

Having some sort of battery monitor is essential for any Pocket PC. A Pocket PC is a great tool, or toy for some, but if your battery drains it's useless. Monitoring your battery will help you be aware of how long you can continue to use your PDA without a recharge. Battery Bar shows this necessary information from the Today Screen.

Battery Pack is actually two programs, Battery Bar and PowerStore. Omega One currently has a introductory offer where if you purchase Battery Bar you get PowerStore free. At a price of only $6.99US this is an excellent value.

Battery Bar does more that just tell state how much battery is left. After being installed for a while it will actually tell you how much time is left based on past usage before the battery is completely drained. This monitor will become more accurate with time and usage.

Battery Bar also shows how much storage memory is left, for the built in memory and any storage cards that may be in use. It monitors multiple storage cards, such a HP's Safe Store and a CompactFlash card. It displays this information by alternating between them every couple of seconds. This alternation is one area I wish was customizable, it would be nice to either set the time or be able to manually switch between storage cards. Version 2.4 fixes this alternating data, it now by default, alternates about every 5 seconds. You also can tap the memory card icon to keep either memory card displayed. A second tap will change to the other card, and once you have cycled through all available cards it will go back to the alternating about every 5 seconds.

Battery Bar also has a little light bulb on it. The light bulb is to adjust the backlight, on a Compaq iPAQ there are up and down arrows so that you can adjust this directly from the Battery Bar, on an HP Jornada it just shows the light bulb, tapping on the light bulb launches the display settings. On an iPAQ you have 5 backlight settings on a Jornada this is a slide bar, so having up and down arrows for a Jornada might not be feasible.

The question mark launches Help for Battery Bar and PowerStore and the icon on the far left launches PowerStore. PowerStore displays Main Battery, Backup Battery, Program Memory, Storage Memory and Storage Card information all on one easy to read screen. This is displayed both via graphs and text making it very easy see this information in a quick glance. If you have a removable storage card inserted it will display this card. If you don't have a storage card inserted it will display the iPAQ File Store or HP's Safe Store. The name of the storage card is also displayed so you know what you are looking at. Pressing the Battery/Folder icon launches Battery Store only if the shortcut to Battery Store is in it's default directory of Programs. If you move the shortcut to another folder pressing the Battery/Folder icon will no longer launch Power Store. PowerStore however will still work if you launch the shortcut from it's new location.

Final Words:
This small but very usefully utility is a must have. Seeing how much time you have to use your Pocket PC is much more useful than just knowing what level your battery is at. There are a few improvements that can be made to help it become even better, improving the shortcuts and maybe having battery or time left shown up on the top bar beside the clock so that you can see this information from most programs would be a couple. The program is great as is stands now but as we all strive for improvements there are couple of my personal suggestions.