WinTasks 4 Professional Review
| Company Info: Leading Interactive Category: Windows Utitilies Supported OS: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP Price: $49.95 Rating: 4.0/5.0 |
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Reviewer: Wayne Eggert
Date: July 06, 2003
I was given the opportunity to review WinTasks 4 Professional by
Leading Interactive, a Sweden-based company, after the fine folks there
gratiously mailed me the software, free of charge. I am reviewing this
software on Windows XP, but it is backwards compatible with other
Windows versions (although some features may not be available in all
Windows versions). The software appeals to IT professionals, software
developers, and advanced users of Windows with its advanced Task
Manager features and scripting interface.
1. Installation
2. Features
3. Compatibility
4. Conclusions/Recommendations
1. Installation
Installation is very straightforward. The software takes less that 3MB
of disk space, so the install is completed within seconds. Following
installation, the user can immediately start WinTasks up and view a
list of processes that are currently running on the system.
2. Features
WinTasks 4 Professional is full of features that can benefit
programmers and IT professionals. One very useful feature is the
ability to view up to 24 hours of CPU and Memory usage graphs. If
you're a software developer and are trying to determine if your program
is stable or find memory leaks, this would certainly be of use. IT
Professionals would also find these graphs to be helpful in determining
specific software bottlenecks or in determine resource requirements for
software they are evaluating.
Another useful feature is the ability to stop or change
the priority of multiple processes with a single click. Running
processes and priorities can also be saved to presets to allow for a
system state to be easily restored. While Windows XP usually does a
decent job at stopping a process when killed through Task Manager, I
can remember many times in Windows 98 where nothing beyond a reset
would allow me to kill a process. Often the BSOD would appear, taking
any programs I had previously been working with along with it. This
alone should motivate Windows 95/98 users to consider this software, if
for nothing else but to easily identify problematic programs and end
them.
Ever wonder what specific dlls were being used by a
process? How about the number of threads owned by a process or
executable file properties and version information? WinTasks 4
Professional allows you to view all of these details and more. There is
an unbelievable amount of information that can be viewed about each
process. You even have the ability to rename a process or add user
notes on a per process basis to quickly help identify a process in the
future.
If you've ever been plagued by a program that constantly
starts when you boot up Windows, WinTasks can help with that too.
Auto-starting programs can be enabled, disabled, added, and removed.
WinTasks can be very helpful in finding Spyware, Trojans, or those
annoying programs that are causing your system to run slow.
Probably hands-down the most useful feature in this
program is the scripting ability it contains and the versatility that
it allows. The scripting runs in the background and constantly checks
the status of the processes. In doing this, you could set the priority
of a process to be decreased if the percentage of CPU time it is using
reaches say, 50%. You could also chain processes such that when
starting Microsoft Word, the calculator also loads up. The flexibility
of the included scripting language, if used correctly, allows for
unbound possibilities and is without a doubt a very handy tool.
3. Compatibility
As I mentioned earlier, WinTasks 4 Professional is compatible with
Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP, but there are some features that are not
available in all Windows versions. On Windows NT, the number of threads
per process is not supported. On Windows 98 the CPU usage and memory
usage statistics per process are not available. Additionally, for
security purposes, system processes cannot be stopped in Windows
NT/2000/XP.
4. Conclusions/Recommendations
While WinTasks 4 Professional may appear at first glance to be simply
an upgraded Task Manager, it is undoubtedly much more. The scripting
features of the software allow for limitless possibilities in
controlling programs and processes. Unresponsive programs can be easily
found and killed regardless of the Operating System being used.
Software developers and IT Professionals will find the detailed process
information and graphs to be beneficial in identifying software leaks
and problematic software. Some may find the cost of the software to be
a little high, especially considering some of the features could be
fascilitated through the use of freeware programs or built in Windows
functions, but the software does an excellent job of combining elements
related to process management into a single interface and the scripting
utilities it includes are unmatched. I would definitely recommend this
software to anyone in software development, IT, or a similar field that
requires advanced task management.
Final Rating: 4.0/5.0
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