Take control of your PC resources with Kiwi

It doesn't matter how much RAM you pack into your cutting-edge PC running off a SSD disk  -- programs have a habit of gobbling up all the resources they can get their hands on, resulting in sluggish performance and a sudden desire to take a pickaxe to your digital companion.

You can often diagnose problematic programs simply by opening Task Manager to review which ones are currently swallowing up all your RAM and CPU cycles, but it only works in real time. If you want to be able to monitor selected applications and processes over a more extended period of time, try Kiwi Application Monitor 1.4.6.

Kiwi Application Monitor, which hails from Slovenia rather than New Zealand, opens up with a brightly colored interface that makes it both friendly and accessible without hobbling its potential usefulness. Click the "Add" button to pick a program or running process to monitor ??" once done, you'll see a list of basic rules of alerts and actions you can enforce for this particular program.

Set an alert when its memory demands exceed a certain level or go one step further and forcibly close the application if its memory or processor demands exceed a certain level, or it runs beyond a certain time limit. Ignore the Advanced Rules tab for now -- access to this requires a Pro upgrade for $37.

Of course, you may simply prefer to monitor the selected application or process, in which case just click "Add" and you'll see it appear in the main application window. From here, selecting a process reveals more about it than relying on Task Manager: basically you get to see how long it's run for, plus its demands, including peak memory usage, both in the current session and since the program was selected for monitoring.

Click the "Advanced Info" button and you can go further, applying a specific priority to this process either to rein in its demands or to give it extra oomph to help it perform better at the expense of other applications. If the idea appeals, but the thought of manually setting up all your applications puts you off, try Process Lasso instead.

There are more advanced tools out there -- if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of what's running, consider an alternative like System Explorer or Process Explorer, but for the rest of us, Kiwi Application Monitor should provide enough information to get a reasonable view of what applications are currently sucking the life out of your system, letting you take remedial action.

Kiwi Application Monitor 1.4.6 is a freeware download, with some limitations, for PCs running Windows XP or later.