Mini-reviews on the forum
This page collects various reviews that have been posted by users on our forum. They represent the views of the poster and not necessarily the views of the site administrators. To browse a more complete and up-to-date collection of mini-reviews, check out the mini-review section of our forum here.
Editorial Integrity
DonationCoder does not accept paid promotions. We have a strict policy of not accepting gifts of any kind in exchange for placing content in our blogs or newsletters, or on our forum. The content and recommendations you see on our site reflect our genuine personal interests and nothing more.
Latest Forum Posts
It was driving me madIt was driving me mad. My laptop would sporadically run at 100% CPU utilization and lock up. It defied all attempts at analysis as the PC was seized and I couldn't do anything. Only a hard reboot was possible, but on rebooting the problem was gone.
Eventually I solved it with a superb little utility called Process Tamer, written by "Mouser" over at Donation Coder. Process Tamer is a monitor that watches the CPU utilization of all running processes. Once the usage of a single process gets above a certain level (by default 70%) Process Tamer reduces the usage by lowering the process priority.
It's a simple idea and Process Tamer implements it immaculately. With Process Tamer installed, the next time the problem occurred on my laptop it didn't totally lock up but rather just ran very slowly. This allowed me to do a quick diagnosis. The problem turned out to be simple but non-obvious. Two programs, Diskeeper and X1, had been accidentally scheduled to start at the same time and were getting into an embrace of death. It was unexpected, as these two normally peacefully co-exist. Simply re-scheduling the programs to start at different times solved the problem.
I couldn't have solved the problem as easily without Process Tamer. However Process Tamer has much broader application than just this kind of problem.
It's a great tool for preventing any one program from hogging your processor. Every user has experienced the situation where their PC has been slowed down to the point of being unusable, by a background program such as a desktop search program, that starts and takes all the resources. Process Tamer will stop that from ever happening again.
I was so impressed with Process Tamer that I've permanently installed it on my laptop. It takes only around 6MB of memory space and its own CPU usage is so low I could barely measure it.
Process Tamer is available for free from the Donation Coder site. They use a novel licensing system: you have to register to get a free license key which allows you to download any number of programs on the site. This key lasts six months after which you must return to the site to download another free license key. After a year you are given a permanent license. Alternatively, you can make a once-up donation of any size and get a permanent key straight away. It's a clever and ethical way to encourage users to recognize the work done by freeware authors and I support it fully. I donated generously and I hope you do too.
Mini-reviews on the forum
This page collects various reviews that have been posted by users on our forum. To browse a more complete and up-to-date collection of mini-reviews, check out the mini-review section of our forum here.
You are viewing a specific blog item. Click here to return to the main blog page.
LocatePC: Free Theft Recovery Software For Your PCLocatePC is free software, and runs unobtrusively on your computer, with no icons, popups or saved emails. If your computer is stolen then the thief will not even know that LocatePC is running, and as soon as they connect to the internet a secret email is sent to you containing the details that you need to track your hardware. Freeware from Iconico, who make some really awesome screen measurement tools. Example email Spoiler Message sent: 7/19/06 11:43:06 (universal time: 7/19/06 19:43:06) Computer's host name: John_Desktop Logged in Windows account name: John Found 2 network connection(s) on this computer (this list may be incomplete): 1 Name: MyISP Type: Dialup modem Phone number: (555) 555-4321 User name: JSmith 2 Name: BigCo Type: PPPoE Service name: MySvc User name: (empty) Computer's web IP address reported by ip.locatepc.com: 216.239.142.3 To learn more about this IP address, use the IP tests at www.dnsstuff.com. Computer's local IP address(es): Adapter 1: 101.151.8.92 Computer's MAC address(es): Adapter 1 (ZX-11 Ethernet): 00-21-54-17-64-26 Trace route to www.locatepc.com: Hop Name/IP Addr 1 Router [101.151.2.1] 2 101.151.8.92 3 cust-quik.pdx.or.uspops.net [216.239.161.82] 4 fe1-1-300.gw0.pdx.or.uspops.net [216.239.161.81] 5 206-169-234-45.gen.twtelecom.net [206.169.234.45] 6 core-02-ge-3-1-0-508.ptld.twtelecom.net [66.192.248.108] Identifying information (owner name/address, computer model/serial number): This computer is the property of: John Smith 123 Elm Street Anyville, NY 12345 Computer brand: ABC Computer model: Megazoom 10000 ------------------------------------ IF YOU RECEIVED THIS MESSAGE AFTER YOUR COMPUTER WAS STOLEN: Show this message to law enforcement authorities. They may be able to use it to identify the ISP, and the ISP can probably find out which account was using the computer when the email was sent. This may lead to the identification of the perpetrator(s) and the recovery of your computer. ------------------------------------ This message was automatically created and sent by LocatePC v1.4.5 LocatePC web site: http://www.iconico.com/locatePC |
||
