First post, woo! I'm actually really excited to start this going: in between school and work, this will be the perfect way for me to unwind in the way only a nerd like I can appreciate.
Now, onward!
Now, onward!
Freeware Download of the Week:
Yahoo! Widgets - Sys Monitor
This first download for you all is a bit of a two-parter, but it will be all through one webpage. This handy little download is great and something I use every time I'm my computer.
Let me start at the beginning:
Widgets -
[Desktop] Widgets are interactive virtual tools that provide single-purpose services such as showing the user the latest news, the current weather, the time, a calendar, a dictionary, a map program, a calculator, desktop notes, photo viewers, or even a language translator, among other things.Yahoo! Widgets is a fun little program that can pretty much do what wiki says: show you stocks, updates from RSS utilized sites, and of course all the neato stuff that I just quoted, to say the least. One Widget in particular 'Sys Monitor' has become the application-love of my life.
-Wikipedia.com
Instead of having to get to your Task Manager through the traditional 'Ctrl + Alt + Delete' method just to see your computer performance and CPU usage, you can monitor that, and much more in real-time with this download.
Using Sys Monitor one can, well, monitor just about every needed aspect of one's computer:
CPU usage, Physical and Virtual RAM, Hard Drive Space, WiFi Signal Strength, Battery Life (along how much battery you have left in mins), Internal Temperature, and so much more.
All of these options are able to be ordered in a drag-and-drop fashion, and able to be added/removed through a simple 'Preferences' menu, accessible by right clicking the widget itself.
Did I mention that this all comes in a sleek, tiny little design?
This download doesn't come without it's minor squabbles, however:
If you are an avid 'Alt-Tabber', like myself, you'll run into a little annoyance. Since Yahoo! Widgets is still just a running program, like your internet browser, when you 'alt-tab' to your desktop is "pushes" the widget off-screen, as if it was just another window. When you do that (which for me happened many times before I re-taught myself to stop alt-tabbing to my desktop) you have to re-bring back up the Widget, by restoring and then minimizing a window on your taskbar. Although this only takes a moment, it starts to add up, considering you'll only be glancing at the Widget for a few seconds or so each time you check your computer's stats. Long story short: it's pretty annoying at times.
Also, there have been times (mostly when I turn the laptop on from sleep mode) that Sys Monitor will quit updating and refreshing, so I'll have to click on the Yahoo! Widgets task bar icon and restart the Widget, again a minor annoyance that I have encountered more than a few times now.
The Lowdown:
Although not without it's minor annoyances, the Sys Monitor Widget provides to be a tool that becomes easily essential and very user friendly, along with the Yahoo! Widgets program itself.
Considering the ease and expansion of computer system monitoring taken through with this download, I recommend this for anyone looking for a simple and straightforward piece of freeware that puts your computer's stats up-and-front at a glance, in a shiny beautiful display.
Both Yahoo! Widgets and Sys Monitor are free and easy to download.
Setups and installations are both walkthroughs and self-explanatory.
I give Yahoo! Widgets - Sys Monitor:
4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5 stars
