I didn’t think I had anything more to do with my TopProcess Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget after its minor update a couple months ago. However, I got a suggestion emailed to me from a TopProcess user that was easy to implement and adds a lot to the gadget. So, TopProcess now allows you to choose between measuring the top consumers of CPU, and the top consumers of RAM. So all you need to do is add two copies of the gadget to your sidebar, and set one to track memory and one to track CPU. Check it out (Firefox users will not be surprised that it always sits at the top):
In CPU mode it displays percentages, and in RAM mode it displays absolute memory footprint values. Remember that some apps (like .NET or Java apps) look like they’re taking a lot of memory, but will give it back when you get low on RAM, so it’s not a worry if they gobble up some extra RAM when you’ve got it. Of course, for most native apps (like Firefox or Photoshop), the value displayed in TopProcess represents a less flexible chunk of resources.
A couple of bugs and less-than-desirable behaviors have been fixed, too. Whenever you change settings the changes will be reflected in the gadget immediately, and turning text fade off and then on again won’t cause text to overlap in a big mess. Also, some of the comments on the Windows Live Gallery page for TopProcess suggest that people have been seeing performance problems with the gadget. I haven’t actually seen any problems myself, but I went through the code and tightened it up a bit here and there – hopefully it’ll work better for those people.
So pick up the new version, rate it on Windows Live Gallery, and enjoy the new functionality.
PS: I was holding this back until my friend could come through with the Russian and Japanese translations, but he’s just too busy and I had to fall back to Google Translate. I apologize if the translations are awful. If you would like to help fix them, or to translate TopProcess into your favorite language, please contact me.
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Hi, grate app but for me the topprocess is showing the ram multiply by 2 !! Its weird. Example: Skype: task manager 21MB. TopProcess 42MB. All process are multiplied by 2.
Tks,
Fernando, you might be looking at the “Private Working Set” in task manager, while TopProcess displays the “Total Working Set”. Private Working Set doesn’t count the memory that’s shared between multiple processes. Maybe I should change TopProcess to show only the “Private Working Set” but they’re both interesting to watch.
Hey – I love this Gadget! It’s definitely got a bug, though. I have it set to display 10 processes, and set to display memory usage. It ranges from several hours to a day or two of running, but after a while I get an error message in red at the top of the gadget. (I forget the error as I just restarted the gadget – if I think of it, next time it shows up I’ll take a screen shot)
It’d also be nice to see a version number somewhere in the config so we know we’re using the latest version :) Otherwise, one of my favorite gadgets that I always reinstall.
Yes, there is a problem, and I’m working on fixing it.