If your computer is running hot or battery running out quickly
then it is most likely due to some application or process consuming
high CPU or memory. If you keep running applications for a long
time, for example, Outlook, then it continues to grow in memory
consumption and does not free up memory efficiently. As a result,
your computer runs out of physical memory and other applications
run slower. Sometimes Outlook, browser, image editing applications
or some other application start taking full CPU as they get into
some heavy internal processing and make your CPU hot and other
applications perform slower.
My new CPUAlert is an
application that monitors CPU and memory consumption of
applications and alerts you if some application is consistently
taking high CPU or high memory. It not only saves your CPU and
Battery’s lifetime but also makes your computer run smooth
and let your active applications run as fast as they can be.
While it is running, if some process is consuming more than 200
MB memory, it will show you an alert:
Here you can see my Outlook is taking 244 MB of physical
RAM.
You can either postpone the alert for 5 mins (just press ESC),
or ignore the process permanently so that you no longer receive
alert for the process anymore, or you can close it and reclaim
memory.
The handy feature is “Restart” which closes the
application and starts again. This generally frees up memory that
clogs up in the process.
Same alert will come if some process is consuming more than 30%
CPU for over 5 mins.
You can configure all these settings like what’s the
tolerable limit for CPU and memory, how frequently to show alert,
how long to wait before closing application etc by right clicking
on the Task bar icon and choosing Settings.
Source code of the project is available at:
http://code.google.com/p/cpualert/
The installer can also be downloaded from there.
Warning: The code is not in a good shape. I was frustrated at
some process taking high CPU and memory and I wrote this app within
hours to get the job done for me.
If you like the application, spread the word!