Comments on: FreeMeter: a low-impact system monitor

By: Noteworthy Shareware turned Freeware in April 2011 | freewaregenius.com

Noteworthy Shareware turned Freeware in April 2011 | freewaregenius.com — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:59:15 +0000

[...] and dockable. Reminds me of many a similar freeware program that was written up on this blog (e.g. FreeMeter, Hexagora Performance Monitor, and Prism HUD).Still, with the ability to customize both the [...]

By: Jason H

Jason H — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:13:40 +0000

Heh, blah.

Check out Speedfan for a utility to keep tabs on the temperature of your internals.
http://www.404techsupport.com/2009/04/07/get-the-skinny-on-your-phat-hardware-benchmarking/

CPU juices do not sound like that great of a marinade. I’ll take my CPU medium please.

By: blah

blah — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:08:03 +0000

yet another “utility” that misses the point. take for instance: you can alert on cpu usage over time… but NOT on cpu temperature. oh my, please, oh PLEASE send me an email when my CPU has been over 80% for more than 20 seconds, but BY GOD don’t bother when my CPU is frying in its own juices!

By: deuce44

deuce44 — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:37:57 +0000

i use the everest ultimate edition 5 tasktray icons. icons in the tray without having to click or mouseover tell me hard drive temps, cpu temp, gpu temp, motherboard temp, memory utilization, cpu utilization, plus tons more that i turned off. i know it is not freeware, but everest is really top top shelf.

By: blaszta

blaszta — Fri, 01 May 2009 05:47:01 +0000

3.8 MB? My Samurize use only 1.5 MB: it watch net connection (up & down), 2 CPU core usage, RAM, available HD space (C & D), & battery level. + I can see today’s date , stick to the desktop, and it blends well with any wallpaper I have

By: Jason H

Jason H — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:34:26 +0000

I can definitely agree on that point. Personally, I think it’s a little contradictory to have an application called FreeMeter Professional that isn’t free…

Your review for SysTrayMeter was more informative than what I was basing my previous opinions on, so SysTrayMeter has it’s merits. I concede.

It should also be stated that I was using NetLimiter for network tracking and per-process bandwidth metering, so I overlooked that missing element from the free FreeMeter.
http://www.404techsupport.com/2008/09/12/bandwidth-monitoring-bandwidth-meters-for-the-comcast-internet-cap/

By: Samer

Samer — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:56:03 +0000

I must admit I agree with Rarst on this one. The paid version of this program should have been free; there are many freeware alternatives.

I’m also like Joe in that SysTrayMeter is my favorite: http://www.freewaregenius.com/2007/07/10/systraymeter/

By: Rarst

Rarst — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:35:01 +0000

@Jason H

I just got an impression from program home page that it tries to present something very common in performance monitors (low resource usage) like powerful feature.

And they are asking to pay for pro version for such basic (again) things such as choosing fonts and colors – which doesn’t strike me as great interface decision either.

I think that it tries to sell in saturated niche without really having selling point.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:27:27 +0000

+1 for TinyResMeter over this – always-on-top + disappear-when-mouseover + click-through just can’t be beat if you want a display on your desktop, but my favorite is still SysTrayMeter: a single tray icon with an upper and a lower digital display: one for CPU and one for RAM.

I’m still looking for an app that would allow me to monitor Schrödinger’s cat…

By: 404 Tech Support » FreeMeter: a low-impact system monitor

404 Tech Support » FreeMeter: a low-impact system monitor — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:27:00 +0000

[...] screenshots and read the full article on FreeMeter over at Freewaregenius. VN:F [1.2.2_602]Recording vote… Thank you for your feedback.Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast) Share [...]

By: Jason H

Jason H — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:22:35 +0000

@Rarst
I think you have to take it all in the proper context. If someone is running a system resource monitor, they most likely would not want the monitor to be a heavy-foot weighing down on that same system.

I think you touched on something important in your comment though. The interface! The interface can easily bog down the system and cause those performance hits, which they’re saying FreeMeter doesn’t by being “light-weight”. Another important aspect of the interface is whether or not you’re getting the information efficiently. I think FreeMeter makes that presentation nicely where you can get information at a glance.

Personally, I prefer the FreeMeter interface over the TinyResMeter. To each their own! Thanks for your feedback.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:59:56 +0000

I find light resource reasoning questionable. All of monitors draw most of their data from services built-in in Windows. Which kinda always work and consume resources (unless explicitly disabled) even without any monitors running.

Unless interface (and that’s what monitors are) is really crappy or does something stupid like trying to poll for data every few milliseconds – there is no noticeable performance hit.

PS I think TinyResMeter eats this one alive and for free