The ultimate Mac tracking tool gets a
fresh coat of paint
iStat Menus appeals to those who love to
keep a close eye on a system's performance and need detailed information
available at the click of a mouse. The product is in two parts: one that's
essentially a fancy preferences panel, plus several modules that live in the
menu bar. You use the former to toggle and configure the latter.
iStat
Menus 4
Each module performs a separate task,
enabling usage-monitoring for CPUs, memory, disks, batteries and network
activity. A drop-down with extensive data is available by clicking any module.
There's also a time module, which can house a world clock and calendar events.
In the version we tested, old events are hidden, but there are plans to merely
dim them in an update.
History
graphs now provide historical data for the previous hour, day, or week.
The bottom line. If you’ve used iStat Menus
before, the update isn't essential unless you need Retina support, a more
robust Mountain Lion experience, calendar entries, or new history graphs, which
log hour/day/week histories for things like network and memory usage. We also
weren't keen on the new preferences interface, which is fiddly and indistinct.
But aside from issues with the disk activity module not working on one of our
test Macs, iStat Menus remains impressive and useful.
If
you’ve used iStat Menus before, the update isn't essential unless you need
Retina support, a more robust Mountain Lion experience
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iSTAT MENUS
4.0.2
·
Website: www.bjango.com Price: $16
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Requirements: 64-bit Mac. OS X 10.6 or later
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(+) Time module still excellent. Useful
history graphs. Robust and resource-light.
·
(-) Ul niggles and a few bugs.
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