Tag: MONITOR

Tech favorite WinPatrol -- a great tool for keeping an eye on system processes and files -- has been updated to 20.0.2011. Support for 64-bit Windows installations has been improved, and WinPatrol is generally more responsive now than in previous versions. WinPatrol's "move to delayed start" option provides a nice way to improve your system's startup time, and it has also been tweaked for better ...

Large websites (like DownloadSquad or any other major blog/site) have full-time sysadmins, dedicated hosting facilities, and a ton of fail-safe mechanisms to ensure that they're always up and available. However, if you have a small site that's running off of a shared host you may sometimes be surprised to discover that it's down. That rarely happens, but when it does happen you usually discover ...

Erez might have been less than thrilled with Acronis Drive Monitor the other day, but I have a feeling he'll like Passmark's DiskCheckup a lot more. They're the same people who produce the awesome app BurnInTest -- one of my all-time favorite technician tools. It's a simple little tool which keeps an eye on the SMART status of your hard drives. In addition to displaying an exhaustive amount of ...

S.M.A.R.T is an acronym that stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. It's a nice bit of intelligence that hard drive makers have been including into drive firmware for several years now. In simple terms, it's supposed to let you know that a drive is about to crash before the crash happens. You can then take measures to protect your data or, perhaps, return the drive to the ...

Sometimes you may want to know what's going on with your disk at a given moment. Maybe you're just curious that way, or maybe you're trying to troubleshoot a problem or detect whether or not there's a keylogger on your PC. For those times, DiskPulse can come in very handy. There are three versions of the software: Free, Pro and Ultimate. Naturally, I tested the free one, and it's surprisingly ...

Running dual (or triple, or quad) displays has gotten a lot more common of late, thanks in part to constantly falling monitor prices. Some things about multiple displays can be a little frustrating -- minding the divide, for example. If you have Windows set to extend your desktop, your mouse moves instantly from one screen to the next. That can be bothersome when a program's controls (like a ...

Do you need to know about a new product release the minute it happens? Are you watching Amazon price changes like a hawk? Is your F5 key worn out from overuse? You might want to look into some automatic ways to monitor website changes. I know RSS is the trendy way to keep up with new posts on websites -- I use it all the time -- but some sites don't offer RSS feeds, and some people either don't ...

A little while back, the Pingdom crew released a handy iPhone app which enables on-the-go monitoring of your website through their service. Now they've added a desktop application to the mix - perfect for those times when you're relaxing comfortably at your workspace. The notifier runs on Windows XP, Vista, and 7, and it's dead simple to set up and use. Install it, enter your credentials, and ...

Just about every operating system out there includes some basic notification for a laptop's battery level. For Windows users who want to go beyond basic, give BattCursor a try. One of the app's coolest features is the ability to warn you when your battery is low by altering the color of your window borders. By default it's set to yellow for low and red for critical, but you can specify any mix ...

It's usually pretty obvious when one of your Windows applications goes rogue and starts consuming more resources than it should. Your system becomes sluggish and unresponsive, Usage Monitor is a small, free program that allows you to watch processes for excessive use of memory and GDI/user objects. Set a target on a process - say, 300Mb memory on Firefox - and Usage Monitor can alert you a ...

Let's face it: some of us don't get outside as much as we should. When you're working or playing in front of your computer all day, you don't always notice little things like a sunset. An ingenious little app called F.lux lets your monitor adjust to ambient lighting conditions around you, even when you're glued to the keyboard. It adjusts your display settings based on location and your current ...

You've probably heard of Dead Pixel Buddy, a free app that helps you locate dead or stuck pixels on your LCD monitor. One of our devoted readers has sent us an interesting alternative that runs in your browser. Willy Ci has coded it as part of his portfolio, and it's elegantly simple. Pick a color with the palette tool, click go full screen, and your monitor is instantly awash in glorious ...

Have you ever asked yourself, "Is someone else using my email account?" Well, if you're the cautious type, Google just added a few log-in monitoring features to its email service, so such paranoid questions won't feel so pressing anymore. Wondering if you're Gmail account is open in multiple locations? Just look at the very, very bottom of the main Gmail page. It'll say something to the sound ...

Are you lucky enough to have more than one monitor on your computer? Sure it looks cool, and it's fun to show off to friends..but it's very helpful with productivity too. What's the first thing you do when you set up a new machine or monitor? Throw up fresh new wallpaper of course! Your mom, your cat, or your wife or girlfriend (hopefully not both, awkward!). AutoWallpaper comes from a company ...

Just when you thought the world of web analytics was a little bland, Basil arrives to spice things up a bit. Basil takes out the pages of raw web traffic data that we once had to sift through and analyze, and does all the hard work for us. They provide easy to use clean interface design [reminding us of Mint] to make it easier for figuring out what the popular pages of your website are, and what ...