15-Minute Reviews :: WhatsGoingOnInMyPC v5.2

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review. Today’s review is on WhatsGoingOnInMyPC version 5.2 by Albert Sadykov – An application to aid you monitor the processes running on your system and the resources they are using.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“What processes are running? Which computers are connected to mine over network? And who uses my shared folders? WhatsGoingOnInMyPC gives you answers to these questions. WhatsGoingOnInMyPC tells you about all the things that happen on your computer.

It takes very little desktop space, informs you about all important system events and allows you to easily control shared resources, windows services, running programs and network connections.”

Quick Pros

• On-screen display could be a helpful tool
• Four different managers have a varying level of usefulness
• Freeze! functionality is a good idea
• ‘About this computer’ does offer some useful information but is limited

Quick Cons

• Interface is not much to look at
• Do we need a built-in MP3 player?
• Event window is pesky at best and didn’t find much use in it
• May have made a good technician’s tool, if it didn’t rely on .NET 2.0
• 1 percent average CPU usage too high

Expansion

Upon the first launch of the application, you are greeted by a splash screen as well as a dialog box prompting you on whether or not you’d like to set up the application. While you can bypass this step, I would recommend starting out on it, if nothing else to set up where your file preferences land. The settings cover a bit of ground, including hotkey settings (None of which are set to start with); events settings, which are a handy set of tools if you need to know when something does something (Server being manipulated, for example); and a few other general settings as well.

Once you’re done here, you’ll be greeted by the on-screen display, so long as you didn’t disable. It is movable (Just have to catch the text to click and drag) to place it where you’d like it. I liked the idea, especially when I’m working on an application and would like to see if something is getting into a run-away state. I did bump into an issue a few times where it would end up underneath a window somehow, and no idea why or how.

Next was into the System Tray icon and its options. What appears to be a fairly large part of this application is the four ‘Manage’ areas; Connections, processes, services, and shares. They all seem to have their own window instead of being on a tabbed interface or some other form of collective control. All the windows are essentially the same; Displaying a list of the current connections, processes, services and shares (depending on which window you have open), as well as some information on them. At the bottom of each page is a set of buttons pertaining to each managed aspect. A common theme for the connection, process and service manager is the ‘What is it?’ button. I was hopeful that, like other applications I’ve tested in the past, would reveal more information, gathered from its database or from an online source. Unfortunately, all the application does is provide information embedded in the target itself. The services manager and process manager essentially hash up the information that is provided by the same easy-to-use Windows tools and doesn’t offer much more (Except the Freeze button – Touch on that next). What did intrigue me was the ‘Freeze!’ button, both on the connection manager and the process manager. I tinkered quite a bit, and I loved the idea; Why didn’t Windows throw this into the works?

The ‘About this computer’ functionality is interesting in itself. It does provide a good deal of information on the system, although the display of information isn’t pretty. You can save the information tab-by-tab, but there appears to be no way to print or save all the information in one go. This functionality does need some maturing.

Overall; I found the interface overly drab and awkward to use. As noted above some of the reasons why, overall I just found it unwieldly. Things like the event window are more annoying than useful in general, and found myself wondering why a system utility application had the need to embed an MP3/WAV player directly into it.

I was rather excited to see that the application was essentially a two-file setup. One was the entire application and the other was the licence key. I was hopeful that this may be a useful as a USB application. This however, was quickly squashed by two factors; The reliance on the .NET 2.0 framework (Which you likely wouldn’t want to have to spend 10 minutes to install on most of your clients system), and the fact that the application appears to not be able to handle the preference and log files in the same directory as itself. Update: This does have the ability to save the prefs and logs to the same folder as the application. Now just the .NET part to overcome. Thanks Leland on the forums for pointing this out.

On a final note, while the memory usage isn’t too bad (Averages around 3.2MB memory usage), I was a bit disturbed by the CPU usage. While idle in the System Tray with the On-Screen Display on, it used 1 percent CPU usage, with times where it would spike from 2 to 4 percent, rather frequently. With just one manager open, the usage goes up to 6 percent; That is quite a bit.

Final Verdict

While the application may have been a decent concept, it fell short at so many spots for myself to really consider it a viable tool. With that said, the application does appear to have the potential to mature into a good tool. For free, it may be something to try to see if it is a choice for you, but with the CPU usage and some of the other notes, it may be a bit too much to chew off. As for paying $34.95, I don’t believe I could recommend this tool with its current feature set for purchase; There are plenty of other tools for free or less out there including ones previously hosted by Giveaway.

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, October 31, 2007