Update 3-2-09: iStat Menus 2.0 is now available. Download.
Update 8-29-09: iStat Menus is a hot button for Snow Leopard. With yesterday's release of Snow Leopard, it wasn't my review that was getting link love it was my iStat Menus update. While I am not sure of iSlayer or BJangos beta policy, I am running v.111 with Snow Leopard and it's working like a champ. The link above will get you to the beta program.
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One of my major disappointments when upgrading to Snow Leopard a week ago was the loss of iStat Menus. Yesterday, after writing an email to Bjango about my anticipation of their update, I promptly got an invite to their beta program and a link to download the Snow Leopard-ready version. I did just that and have been back in business with all the stats at my eye-tips and finger-clicks that I care to peruse.
So in honor of Bjango's rapid response and pre-Snow Leopard beta testing program, I thought I would give a little show of what makes iStat Pro so essential.
My iStat Menus modules in Snow Leopard
You can configure iStat Menus to your heart's content, and what you see above is my layout.
1. The Calendar icon: shows current date – I can't tell you how many times a day I look for this. I had to add the info back to my clock until iStat was back on duty. One click on the icon reveals a navigable monthly calendar and a single click will open iCal if you actually need to schedule something. This has got to be the simplest feature and the one that I bemoaned the most while I was without.
2. Fan/Temp: I guess my MBP is running cool tonight. I like the temperature at a glance. It's not like I need to know HOW hot it is when my palms are aching from the heat, but it's a good warning when the temperature rises above 150 degrees that I need to do something different. With all the information about how heat affects battery life, knowing the status of your internal core temperature is fairly important. One click and I can see all the temperature points and measurements as well as the fan speed as my machine struggles to cool itself.
iStat temperatures
3. I/O Speeds. This is a numeric and graphic readout on how fast my network is transferring data. I am using the stacked view, there are four other graphing options.
4. CPU Usage. This one shows both my COREs. And as you can see the computing power of the Core 2 Duo is well over what I need to be writing in WordPress. There are multiple display varieties for this as well. Beside the display graph is the percentage of utilization. The only time I see the processors maxed out is when I am doing heavy audio or video editing.
5. Free Ram. This final graphic shows me the usage of my available ram both in a pie chart and a free available ram percentage.
There are more options but I use a bare minimum. I was lost without these little touchstones. Some how they give me the feeling that I understand my computer performance and usage patterns better if I am dynamically aware of the feedback from iStat Menus. I don't know if there is anything like this for Windows, but with a laptop so dependent on battery life, heat and performance a little tool like iStat Menus part of my critical path.
iStat Pro Preferences - Snow Leopard Review
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/istat-menu
Again, my thanks to the iSlayer team and Bjango for giving me a shot at the beta. It looks good to me folks.
Gizmodo has a nice snow leopard benchmarking review: Snow Leopard Review: Lightened and Enlightened
