System Monitor 1.1 Update

Did somebody say dual core? We decided to crank out a quick update to the System Monitor gadget for all you enthusiasts out there. We’ve added in dual and quad core support to the CPU monitor and an additional option to the RAM monitor. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Dual and quad core support added.
• Usage display option added to the RAM monitor.
• Added a monitor lock / unlock button.
• Double-clicking the date and time monitor brings up Windows Calendar.

It’s a minor update, but we hope you all enjoy it. Let us know about any issues you run into and any additions you would love to see in the future.

Download:

BuildAGadget.com

Widgipedia.com

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 11:55 am
and is filed under Development, Gadget Stuff.



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17 Responses to “System Monitor 1.1 Update”

1. Tom Ray Says:
   August 30th, 2008 at 4:48 am

   V1.1 of this gadget is impressive. The “selection of tools” feature and other incorporated customization capabilities make the gadget highly versatile. I consider this to be one of the best (if not the best) gadgets of its kind for Vista Sidebar…along with XM Online Radio.

   Suggested Tool additions:

   1. Add a tool that shows the top 3 or 4 running processes in RAM, by CPU utilization percent. I find that the existing gadget “Top Processes” is very useful for monitoring system performance and tracking down problem software.

   2. Add a tool that monitors network activity for either wireless or wired connections. This might be an expanded feature of the existing IP Addresses tool.

2. TH Says:
   September 7th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

   Ever since this update, my player has not been putting out any sound. I can see where it loads the songs and information from the selected channels, just no sound comes out. I can play music from the website fine.

3. TH Says:
   September 7th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

   wrong gadget, sorry

4. Golden Mesa Says:
   September 8th, 2008 at 6:25 pm

   I have downloaded this program but cannot install. Any advice?

5. The Staff Says:
   September 8th, 2008 at 9:29 pm

   Tom Ray, Thanks for the suggestions, we’ll definitely take a look at those for the next update.

   Golden Mesa, Can you elaborate on what’s happening when you try to install the gadget?

6. Vinod Says:
   September 10th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

   Great tool and blogged about it too. A few suggesstions:

   1. As Tom Ray put it above, showing the running processes on clicking the CPU or memory monitors would be nice.
   2. A running display of network activity is cool too
   3. Would be nice to have a hard disk usage monitor as well - showing used and free space.
   4. Ability to change color of the bar for WiFi and Battery status monitors
   5. Themes?

7. Mohit Says:
   September 12th, 2008 at 10:06 am

   Hi
   Getting the monitors in a graph format would be really nice to have with options to choose the length of graph history and refresh rate.

   Ideally monitors required are:
   CPU usage with options for multi core 1/2/4
   RAM Usage
   Network utilization LAN / WLAN like a graph with signal strength
   Hard drive / drive usage
   Battery usage
   System monitor gadget in this on one line
   IP Address
   Ping tab

   I know this is asking a lot but most of us use all these separate gadgets.
   Would be great to have all in one.

   Thanks

8. SRG Says:
   September 18th, 2008 at 10:10 am

   How about an ARIN Lookup in the tools?
   http://www.arin.net

9. mo Says:
   September 20th, 2008 at 9:13 pm

   I get a message ‘no wireless ip’. I don’t have wireless & have wired network. Does this gadjet assume all computers are networked wirelessly?

10. The Staff Says:
    September 21st, 2008 at 4:40 am

    SRG, thanks, we’ll look into those.

    mo, unfortunately, the sidebar API only gives information about the wireless IP on laptops. For some reason, the sidebar was never given built in wired IP calls. We’re hoping to alleviate this in the future, probably though doing some custom ActiveX programming.

    Everyone Else, thanks for the suggestions, we are reading them and hope to be able to include many of them as time goes on, this gadget is far from perfect. Don’t worry, we’re working on it.

11. Matt Says:
    October 4th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

    Great gadget! One bug (I’m guessing it’s a bug) I’ve run into is that on my laptop, the battery time estimate seems to have a max time of 1:59. At 100% charge, Windows says I have over 3 hours, but the gadget always shows 1:59 (until I reach the point that there is actually 1:59 remaining on the battery, and then it starts counting down correctly). It would be nice if the battery time estimate didn’t max-out at 1:59. Other than that, I love it! Thanks

12. Matt Says:
    October 30th, 2008 at 11:58 am

    Nice looking, but shame about the occasional negative readings on the processor activity bars. I didn’t think it was possible to be -0.9% active.

13. Shawn Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    great gadget!
    what about adding hard drive space used at an option?

14. [xubz] Says:
    November 19th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

    Wondering if you can add a ‘Uptime’ Monitor into this!

    But Anyway, Thanks for this great Gadget.

15. Dave Says:
    November 21st, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    Great gadget, but I’ll get to the point of the problem:

    I run a Windows Vista Home Premium, have AMD Turion64 dual core, and your System Monitor have one problem (for me, at least) -

    When I put the preference on the CPU bar as one averaged CPU percentage, when the CPU reaches 100% the bar only shows 50%, and vice versa, the CPU percentage bar seem to show only half of the actual usage, and it’s real bugging to see it as 36% when it’s already 72%.

    Other than that, your gadget is perfect, but due to the above problem I can’t use it, when you hopefully fixed this glitch I’ll come back and use your gadget.

16. Tom Ray Says:
    November 23rd, 2008 at 2:28 am

    - I recommend that the clock either have its own update frequency selector or always update every second.

    - The selected update frequency for tools such as the CPU utilization and RAM significantly impact on the CPU utilization of Vista Sidebar itself. For example, a 1 second update frequency causes Sidebar to jump to ~1.5% CPU utilization; whereas a 5 second frequency drops it to ~0.5% utilization. Perhaps there is some additional optimization in the code that can be done to reduce this?

    - When the clock is not selected for display, the date format enlarges…which is great. However, the year is not always displayed because of not enough room. This varies based on the day of the week or the month. Maybe the year can be truncated to 08 instead of 2008?

17. a Says:
    November 23rd, 2008 at 3:16 am

    the battery monitor is not functioning. Please update it? My battery last more than 2 hours, perphaps the problem is something to do with the default setting of the battery lifetime of 2hours? So, the battery lifetime shown as 1:59 and in fact my battery last about 3hour, soon i plugged off the timer isn’t counting.