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.
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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.
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Board Game Micro-review: Wits and WagersToday's board game microreview is for "Wits and Wagers". Wits and Wagers is a very clever mixture of trivia, betting, and social interaction. It's fast to play, super easy for anyone, and easily supports 7 players or more with teams. Gameplay works essentially like this: On each round a trivia question is read that has a numerical answer. All players (teams) write down their answer on a dry erase card, and then all answers are laid out in numerical order. At this point, everyone can bet on which answers are correct. In this way, even if you have no idea what the answer is, you have a chance to bet on the answers from people who you think might know. The social element of seeing what answers others gave, and how confident they are, and the range of answers -- is all quite fun. And the strategy and risk taking of betting your accumulated chips is very fun. I've played this twice now with large groups -- the first time was fun but not magical; the second time -- playing with people i didn't know well, was extremely fun. Highly recommended if you have a large group of adults. There are special editions for families and kids (though i think it works better with adults). |
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