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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

Add CPU and memory meters to your Windows 7 taskbar

I'm not the biggest Twitter fan, but let's face it: people sometimes share really useful information in their 140-character updates.

Scott Hanselman (@shanselman), for example, tipped users about a slick addition to your Windows 7 taskbar that you'll find over at Codeplex called Taskbar Meters.

Download developer Jeff Key's .zip file and extract the contents to a folder on your hard drive. Inside you'll find two executables - one for CPU and one for memory. Launch them, and the result is what you see in the screenshot.

The meters make use of the Windows 7 taskbar's progress indicator kung fu. Using the sliders in the ultra-simple options screens you can choose the update frequency and set at what percentage of utilization your indicators switch from green to yellow and then to red. Pin 'em to your taskbar and you've got a simple, Win7-friendly heads up display of your PC's vitals.

They're jumplist enabled as well, though right-clicking only gives you access to task manager (which you've always had by right-clicking the taskbar anyway) and the Windows Resource Monitor.

Each meter uses about 18Mb of ram and worked for me under both 32 and 64-bit builds of Windows 7.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

MZ CPU Accelerator automatically boosts foreground apps


The Windows Task Manager already has options to adjust task priority and processor affinity, but MZ CPU Accelerator's extra features make it well worth installing if you like fine tuning your system's performance.

Activate MZ, and it will automatically assign your pre-set priority level to your foreground window. Click away, and the process automatically returns to the default level. On multi-core and multi-cpu systems MZ will also maintain CPU affinities. You can also exclude any processes that you don't want MZ to manage.

Once your preferences are set, just set MZ to autorun and hide in the system tray, and it will quietly supervise things for you.

Netbook owners may also want to give this one a shot - the automatic boost to foreground application priority does make a bit of difference in performance, even on comparatively slow CPUs like the Intel Atom.

MZ CPU accelerator is a free application (donations accepted), and the file is mirrored at Freeware Files and Softpedia in case you can't reach the author's page. It runs on both 32 and 64 bit Windows.

[ via Into Windows ]

Filed under: Hardware

Nvidia to build x86 processors, take on Intel, AMD?

NvidiaThe Inquirer says it has "confirmed" that 3D graphics giant Nvidia is hard at work building its own x86 processor with integrated graphics to compete with the offerings of Intel and AMD. Both Intel and AMD--which acquried ATI back in July--have been busy strapping integrated graphics on their own chips, it seems logical that Nvidia would want to play, too. Their efforts would be bolstered by its recent hiring of a bunch of engineers from Stexar, a now-defunct company that was founded by ex-Intel brains. The Inq says development is already underway, and we'll be seeing a new CPU from Nvidia sometime in 2006 2008.

[Via Engadget]

Filed under: Windows

Does anyone care about Viiv?

Does anyone care about Viiv?While the question that usually occupies my mind is "Does anyone care about Blu-Ray/HD-DVD?" our sister blog PVR Wire raises another salient query: "Does anyone care about Intel's Viiv?" Like PVR Wire's JJ Hawkins, I've got to wonder if Intel's marketing, which tries to paint it as the only way to build a real multimedia PC, is really getting through to anyone, and if there's anything to it. "This Business Week article describes Viiv as 'Intel's response to demand for personal computers that can record and distribute digitized TV shows, music, and movies around the house-be it on a PC, TV, stereo system, or portable media player,'" say Hawkins. "Call me zany, but I'm already distributing digitized media around my house without the use of Viiv based PC, and while Viiv may be a platform that simplifies this entire process, I can't say the process is all that difficult to begin with - especially utilizing the Windows Media Center PC OS." Do you own a Viiv PC? Is it doing anything spectacular that we should know about? Backflips, maybe? Impromptu iPod commercials? Let us know in the comments.

Filed under: Hardware, News

Intel's laser-based processor

Intel's laser-based chipIn the next 5-10 years by all estimates we should have a processor capable of 1Tbps throughput, at least according to Intel. The optical networking chip Intel is working on uses laser light as the medium for performing computations, instead of the traditional transistor-based chips. Light represents data, which is processed instead of molecules or electrical signals. I guess you could say that fiber optic technology is quite similar to how this chip works. light moves faster than pretty much anything else we currently have, so it makes a great data carrier. A substance called indium phosphide is one that emits light on a single wavelength when electricity is applied to it, which will generate the light source needed to make this processor work. This chip could pay big dividends in computing, not just in fiber networking systems, but in computing platforms as well. Intel believes they could mass-produce these chips in the next 5-10 years, and they will cheaper and easier to produce. Computing at the speed of light sounds good to me.

Filed under: Internet, Text, Productivity, Web services, Google

Google Writely/Spreadsheet invites!


UneasySilence brings word of a little known page which appears to be offering rare and coveted invitations to Google Spreadsheet and online word processing application Writely. The site is still accepting applications (shoot them your email, they shoot you the invites) as of 9:45 MST. I haven't received mine yet, but the guys at Uneasy usually have pretty good stuff. The only other way for us lowly intarweb users to get invites to these services is through knowing someone who has accounts already, and they are few-and-far-between.

Update, 11AM: Got my Writely invite.

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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