Top Process Monitor
Network Monitor II is a desktop widget displaying the status of your processes
Top Process Monitor is a gadget for your Windows desktop. By default, it displays the CPU-intensive processes and their CPU usage.
Top Process Monitor offers a configuration menu that allows you to change the appearance of many elements of its interface. Unfortunately, this menu is confusing because the navigation is done by unnamed tabs.
A feature lacking from this widget is the ability to display a process activity graph. This would allow you to quickly see the recent usage of your CPU. Furthermore, it can only show the current CPU usage rather than a history of the usage.
Another downside of this utility is that it constantly uses a small percent of your CPU in the background. While it is not particularly CPU-extensive, one would expect a gadget to use less CPU as it negatively impacts your laptop's battery life.
In conclusion, Top Process Monitor is a good gadget to quickly see the processes running on your computer, and their CPU usage. Yet, it lacks some features such as displaying graphs.
Pros
- See at a glance which processes use the most the CPU
Cons
- No graph to see the history of the CPU usage
- CPU usage high for a widget
- Confusing settings with unnamed tabs