Top 10 Best System Utilities for Windows PCs
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System Uptime Full Plus
Easily keep track of your system uptime and work session by using the cool features of this elegant gadget that also offers OS installation time.
System Uptime Full Plus is a tiny widget, capable of displaying various useful information about the operating system, such as uptime, which basically means the time passed since the last restart. It is easy to install and set up.
Slim design with options to tweak visuals
The interface of the tool is based on a very small frame that you can move to any position on the screen, with the help of the mouse cursor. It reveals the platform and architecture of the OS, installed date and time, current uptime and record.
A few settings can be modified from the Options panel. Therefore, you can change the frame size, autoscale the DPI, select the time and date format, enable update notifications, as well as hide bars and the record string.
It is also possible to choose colors for the background, title, system, days, numbers, units and others, switch to a different language for the UI, as well as restore all settings to their factory values.
In conclusion
The lightweight widget does not put a strain on the computer's CPU and memory, has a good response time, and performed well during our tests, without causing the operating system to hang, crash or pop up error dialogs; we have not encountered any issues in our tests. Thanks to its intuitive layout and overall simplicity, first-time users can easily learn how to deal with System Uptime Full Plus.
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Download Hubs
System Uptime Full Plus is part of these download collections: Monitor Uptime
System Monitor II
A useful sidebar gadget that enables you to monitor the health of your computer by keeping an eye on the CPU and the memory usage.
System Monitor II is a very useful gadget that provides a quick overview about your system, providing a bunch of useful details directly on the desktop.
Since it's a gadget, System Monitor II can only be accessed from the desktop, but even so, it provides vital information in a much more appealing way than many other standalone utilities.
The memory usage at a glance
System Monitor II displays memory usage, but also the used, free and total amount of memory, with detailed statistics shown right in the main window. Additionally, it displays CPU model and speed, overall and per core usage, alongside a professional-looking graph to help you keep an eye on the way the system works.
Rich set of configuration settings
What's more impressive is the configuration screen that includes tons of options for a Windows gadget. Besides the fact that you can customize interface options such as colors, background and graph details, System Monitor II allows you to specify the CPU you wish to monitor, the refresh rate, the core temperatures and the memory options.
Graphs can be configured as well, with multiple built-in options, so you may have to spend a while setting up both the appearance, as well as the other features of the widget.
A valuable system information tool
Of course, because it's a widget, the footprint on hardware resources is minimal; it works exclusively on Windows Vista and 7, since they're the only ones boasting a sidebar. With additional software installed to re-enable the sidebar, the gadget can also be used in more recent versions of Windows.
Overall, System Monitor II is undoubtedly a must have gadget and thanks to its rich features, it's much more useful than many stand-alone system information tools. It enables you to closely monitor the CPU usage, check the uptime of the PC, as well as other additional indicators helpful to any computer user.
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Top Process Monitor
Display the top most used processes on your system by turning to this lightweight gadget that lets you adjust some of its settings.
Top Process Monitor is a tiny gadget that allows you to view the processes which are using most of your CPU, memory and critical components of your system. It can be easily installed and configured, even by less experienced users.
Choose the process mode of interest
The interface of the app is based on a small frame that you can move to any position on the screen. So, you can check out the current CPU level, along with the applications and the total number of included threads.
Top Process Monitor comes with several configurable settings. So, you can change the processes mode between CPU, memory, PageFiles, Virtual Memory, I/O, read, write, total read and total write.
Set topmost priority, opacity, and position
But you can also adjust the size of the frame or make Top Process Monitor automatically do that, set the refresh rate and number of processes to show, as well as establish the double-click action (Task Manager, Resource Monitor, Performance Monitor, or none).
On top of that, you can make Top Process Monitor cycle through all the aforementioned modes on click, display a warning if the resources usage is above a certain level, customize frame colors, switch to a different language for the UI, as well as restore all settings to their default values.
A few last words
The simple-to-use program does not put a strain on the computer, as it uses a low amount of CPU and system memory. It has a good response time and didn't freeze, crash or pop up errors during our testing. Thanks to its wide range of customization features, skilled users can definitely get a kick out of Top Process Monitor.
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Battery Monitor
Widget that shows numerous useful details on the battery, comprising dozens of customization parameters, and with support for sound notifications.
Battery Monitor is a small widget that shows on the desktop the current battery details of your notebook, as the name implies. It comes bundled with numerous customization preferences, in order to please even picky users.
Battery info on the desktop
The interface is based on a small frame that can be moved to any spot on the screen, with the help of the mouse cursor. Plus, you can make it stay on top of other windows and adjust its opacity level.
Therefore, Battery Monitor is unintrusive, and you can quickly get a glimpse on battery details while working in other apps.
The main frame shows a meter bar and percent level, battery status, remaining time, charge rate and current charge. Battery Monitor also features sound notifications for critical battery levels and full battery mode.
Tweak visuals and audio alerts
It is possible to change the frame size, make it hide when working from the AC adapter, choose the capacity display unit (mWh or mAh), enable animation while charging, as well as specify a power plan for switching to the battery and back to the AC.
As far as sounds are concerned, you can enable them when the laptop is plugged or unplugged, disable them when the flyout opens or closes, disable additional sounds, establish the two battery critical levels for sound alerts and select custom WAV files, and more. Sound settings can be restored to their default values.
Other options of Battery Monitor let you hide the battery picture, status, remaining time, charge/discharge rate, current charge, power plans, title and copyright marker, as well as select custom colors for any of these fields.
A few last words
The small widget is very light on the system resources, using a minimum amount of CPU and RAM. It has a good response time and delivers accurate information, without causing the OS to hang, crash or pop up error dialogs. All in all, Battery Monitor comprises numerous options and configurable settings to please all types of users.
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Download Hubs
Battery Monitor is part of these download collections: Battery Managers
Drives Monitor
Shows logical hard drive activity, enabling you to view the drive's health and keep an eye on the total, used and available storage space.
Drives Monitor is a handy Windows widget that provides you with information at a glance regarding your hard drives. Thus, you can view the hard drive status and monitor disk activity without installing other third party application.
View disk activity with options to virtualize disks
The gadget comprises information about each connected physical or logical hard disks, such as the total, used and free disk space (in GB and percentages) and the disk file system type (NTFS, FAT etc.). Clicking on the drive letter allows opens a flyout window where you can view detailed information about the physical drive model, capacity, type, the number of partitions, cylinders, sectors and more.
You can visualize the disk activity in percentages, but also monitor the real-time transfer evolution using the built-in graphs. The read and the write speed (in bytes per second) are also displayed, together with the total read and written data for the current session.
Create a list of drivers of interest and set refresh interval
All this information is also monitored for any removable drives that you connect to your computer. Furthermore, the gadget includes an 'Eject' button that allows you to safely release the USB device.
If the free space is very low, the disk space usage bar turns red, thus letting you know about this issue and take the appropriate measures.
Excluding drives from monitoring, changing the refresh rate and choosing what information to display (for instance, you can hide the graphics or the read / write counters) are other advantages that the application comes with. In addition, its interface is fully customizable, enabling you to modify the graph drawing style, change the gadget size, opacity and the color of each element to match your desktop theme.
The gadget offers easy access to disk contents, as you can open a drive in Windows Explorer by simply clicking on the background.
To sum it up
Although it is a simple and lightweight sidebar gadget, Drives Monitor provides you with all the necessary tools for monitoring your hard disks status and activity.
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GPU Monitor
Easily track the status of your graphic card and keep an eye on the used memory and its temperature in order to avoid overheating.
GPU Monitor is a handy Windows gadget that monitors your video card and provides a wide array of statistics straight on your desktop.
Delivers a comprehensive set of info
Although just a gadget, GPU Monitor impresses mostly thanks to the amount of information it offers, showing everything from fan and GPU load to temperature and memory.
This little utility comprises multiple graphs to help it achieve the task of delivering video card details, presenting temperature, fan, GPU load, used, free and total virtual memory inside of what could very well be considered a clumsy interface.
Choose the preferred graphics adaptor to monitor
While we admit that GPU Monitor may only come in handy to experienced users, the options menu is pretty impressive, especially when taking into consideration that it's not an application, but just a simple Windows gadget.
It thus allows you to pick the graphic adapter you wish to use, the window size (which is indeed a very handy option), the refresh rate, temperature units and alarm sounds. Furthermore, you can configure temperature graph ranges and its appearance settings, interface colors and logging.
Of course, it takes just a few minutes to figure out how to use the gadget, but the first thing you should do is actually to change the size of the window and thus read the provided information easier.
Obviously, the fact that it's a gadget means that it runs exclusively on Windows Vista and 7. On the other hand, the amount of resources it needs is very low.
To end with
As a conclusion, this is clearly one of the most useful gadgets we've ever seen and since it provides such a large amount of information, make sure to give it a try if you're in the market for a video card monitor.
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Download Hubs
GPU Monitor is part of these download collections: Bandwidth Managers, GPU Managers
The Dude
Scan your network, make a layout map and start monitoring services and devices connected using this comprehensive software solution.
The Dude is a versatile network monitoring application, ideal for dealing with a small network infrastructure. It provides you with all the basic features of a visual network management software and strives to bring to the table some of the tools used by experienced network administrators.
Requires configuration, but includes comprehensive help
This approach is probably what leads to the intimidating user interface. The main functions of The Dude are easily accessible but the wide range of options, settings and commands might scare the inexperienced user at first glance. This is but a minor setback, since after browsing through the application a bit, things tend to become familiar.
After scanning the network, The Dude presents users with an adjustable visual interface of the network structure. All computers, routers, file servers or web servers are displayed using a set of icons to differentiate them, all being presented in a web-like manner. You can easily drag any of the network items you are interested in, and rearrange the structure to your liking.
Easily add and manage new devices
You can add new devices, networks or submaps to the visual representation of the currently discovered items by simply providing the IP address or the subnets, thus extending the framework.
With The Dude you can easily get the IPs, MAC addresses or the services running on any of the machines on the network. You can perform a wide set of actions on any of the computers in the network and use the monitoring protocols to get notifications for all important changes.
You can ping, traceroute, probe, scan or use the remote connection to get information on computers or routers on your network. Furthermore, the application provides you with valuable charts and statistics regarding the performance of your network.
A handy network monitoring tool for advanced users
If you are looking for a free network management solution, then you should give it a try and see what it does for you.
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Download Hubs
The Dude is part of these download collections: Ping Clients, Traceroute Clients, Network Inventory
Network Monitor II
A sidebar gadget that provides information at a glance about Internet signal, your computer's IP addresses, the traffic speed and usage.
Network Monitor II is a Windows widget that provides you important information about the current network connection. You can view the network traffic and information about your IP address directly on your desktop without installing other network monitoring tools.
Customizable design to suit your style
The widget has a customizable interface that allows you to change its size and the information that are displayed. There are two styles available by default but you can also change the colors of every element in order to match your desktop theme. If you make a lot of changes but the result is not what you expected, you can restore the default settings with just one click.
Analyze network traffic and save data of interest
Among the information that is displayed by the widget you can find the local or the external IP address, the network usage and the current upload or download rate. Also included are details about bandwidth usage. The traffic counter lets you automatically save the information when the application is shut down.
The Info button extends the information provided by the widget with data related with the network interface such as the MAC address, the Internet gateway and the DNS server that is used by the computer. The widget provides you with detailed information about the owner of the current IP address when you put the mouse cursor over the flag displayed on the right side.
To end with
Network Monitor II is a fully customizable network information provider that is simple in design but has all the functions that you require to monitor the network traffic for your computer.
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Ping Monitor
With this lightweight desktop gadget you can permanently keep an eye on the ping response of one or multiple servers of your choice.
Checking your connection by pinging various websites isn’t a difficult task to begin with, but a specialized app can make this even easier. Ping Monitor is a Windows gadget that was designed to provide an easy way to ping a server and view the results in real-time.
Easily set the ping interval
The app has a small interface that shouldn’t be difficult to handle.
The tool installs as a widget and the frame can be moved to any area of the screen. You may add up to five different websites from your favorites list and view a real-time graphic with the results.
When adding these, you may choose how frequent the program pings the server and what message to display if any error is detected.
Manage operation behavior and aesthetics
Additionally, several settings can be accessed. For instance, you can have the show lost pings in percentages and to play an alarm sound if ping is lost. Also, the graph lines style may be changed, as well as their width.
The default colors may be modified for various items, such as the background, title, servers and lost pings, to name just a few. The small tool supports logging for any of the servers.
To end with
All in all, Ping Monitor is a nice widget that can be quite useful. Inexperienced individuals shouldn’t have any problems in installing and customizing it, thanks to the intuitive interface and the app’s overall simplicity.
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Download Hubs
Ping Monitor is part of these download collections: Ping Clients
