Activity Monitor is a little bit lacking for me. It’s not that it doesn’t provide pertinent information, it’s that it doesn’t do it in a way I’d like it too. atMonitor on the other hand puts your information in the menubar, and even in a heads up display on your desktop.
It’s a pretty powerful little application. As expected it gives you the information you need on processes that are running rampant (ahem *FireFox* ahem), but it also gives you access to RAM readings, CPU readings, hard drive information, and network transmission speeds.
Pretty much everything Activity Monitor does, but, it also lets you set up triggers that execute scripts. So for instance, if your computer is starting to get laggy and it passes a certain CPU% that you’ve assigned, you can write a nice little script that goes and axes Firefox. A pretty handy feature in today’s day and age of web browsers taking up way too much RAM. Another thing it lets you do is set up priorities for certain processes. So, if you’d prefer Final Cut to get all the attention from the computer while it’s crunching away, rending that home video of yours, you can set it up to do that.
If you’re sick of the activity monitor you might want to check this out. It’s free, so there’s nothing really stopping you from giving it an old fashioned kick at the can.
