What Is It?

A small and efficient utility to manage the amount of CPU time being used by the programs currently running on your PC. This is achieved by a simple set of rules that you can control through the Process Tamer GUI.

As I have said before I am a huge fan of the Donation Coder utilities and this is one that I have installed on all of the PC’s/Laptops I use on a regular basis.

Why Would You Want It?

Some processes(programs) use the CPU very intensively when they are running or maybe only at certain times. When this happens other programs that you are running have less CPU time available and therefore respond slowly. Sometimes you may have to wait for relatively long periods of time before the program you are currently working with will respond or it behaves very sluggishly. Process Tamer will help to overcome these sort of problems in a simple and intuitive way..

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Allows you to set rules for the process priority of running processes based on individual process names or global rules.

Summary:

• Provides a way of automatically changing process priority
• Allows the setting of explicit rules for individual processes
• Shows feedback on changes being made in real time
• Optional Log of changes as they occur

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

• Simple to install and use
• Low memory usage
• Good, relevant configuration options
• Good feedback through tooltips
• Can set priority for foreground process
  (i.e. the process you are currently using)
• Simple to Use
• Versatile & Useful Options
• Included help File
• Useful Web links from menus

Cons:What’s Not So Good?

• ? (If you can find something please share in the Comments )

More About What it Does in Detail:

The Donation Coder Process Tamer website page gives some more detail about the program:

Process Tamer is a tiny (140k) and super efficient utility for Microsoft Windows XP/2K/NT that runs in your system tray and constantly monitors the CPU usage of other processes. When it sees a process that is overloading your CPU, it reduces the priority of that process temporarily, until its CPU usage returns to a reasonable level.

There are many times when a process will hog your CPU, such as when converting audio/video files, or working with compressed archives. Because these processes completely consume the CPU, your system becomes sluggish to respond and using the computer for other tasks becomes impossible while these processes are running.

Process Tamer solves this problem by identifying such these degenerate conditions and temporarily reducing the priority of the offending processes in order to allow your system to respond to other requests. Stop being a victim to an overloaded CPU - let Process Tamer keep your system responsive no matter what you’re doing.

Process Tamer allows you to control individual named processes by setting an explicit priority for that process which will always be enforced while that process (and Process Tamer) are running. You can even set a rule to “Kill” a particular process if it should start. There are also global rules that can be set which will automatically change the process priority based on the percentage of the CPU time that any particular process is running.

Having installed the program the following screens and menus are provided:

This review will follow the usual format of presenting the majority of information as screenshots backed up by further information where necessary.

(click on any picture to enlarge where necessary)

System Tray Icon

Right clicking on the systray icon brings up the following dialog:

These are a useful set of options and are self evident.

Main Configuration Screen

As can be seen this is set out as 3 tab screens

Processes Tab

This is the screen where the running processes are displayed. The processes can be sorted by clicking on the column headings and a simple bar shows the instantaneous process |CPU usage in Blue and the Average CPU usage in Green. A checkbox at the bottom of the screen allows processes using less than 1% of the available CPU resource to be hidden.

Individual priorities can be redefined using the “Priority” dropdown menu:

Priorities changed in this way only apply until the process (or the system or Process Tamer) are restarted.

Alternatively the process priority can be assigned by the “Explicit Rule” dropdown menu:

When this option is used the priority will always be assigned when Process Tamer is running and “Enabled”.

Configuration Tab

The Configuration Tab allows for several variables to be set of changed by the user. The screenshot is fairly explicit in showing what is available however it should be noted that:

• Automatic “Defaults” for taming processes based on CPU usage can be altered and switched on or off.
• Foreground processes (the process currently being used) can have specific rules set.
• Applications with explicit rules set can have these modified even though they are not currently running.
• Tooltip/Balloon messages can be switched on or off

(personally I find that after initially being shown these messages which gives confidence that everything is working they become obtrusive and annoying so I switch them off)

You can also set double clicking the system tray icon to run another program or to toggle the “Enable” or “Configuration” screen options:

Log Tab

If the Log File is enabled in the Configuration Tab then the Log Tab show details as shown below:

Help

The Help button or menu option displays a local help file which is relatively comprehensive as can be seen form the contents list in the following screenshot:

About

The about screen displays details that you would normally expect:

Clicking on the “Enter Licence Key Information” allows this to be entered. This key is free but requires registration otherwise you will be nagged occasionally. A small donation will provide a lifetime key for all DonationCoder utilities and is certainly worth considering.

What are the Technical Details & Compatibility?

What is the My Free Review Experience?

This is a highly useful program that I have installed on all the PC’s & laptops I use. Process Tamer is so easy to use and provides such a useful function it is one of my “Must Have” utilities

Personally I rate this very highly as:

Powerful - Stable - Good options - Essential

What Could Make it be Better?

Ability to define rules based on other processes running .

(e.g. IF Firefox.exe AND foreground THEN ieexplorer.exe LOW)

What Other Posts are Relevant?

DonationCoder Freeware Utilities

Daphne - Modify, Control & Kill Processes with Your Mouse

MoveOut - Auto File Move - DonationCoder Utility

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

Why I decided to Write This Blog

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Freeware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.