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Freeware February: MenuMeters

by Laurie A. Duncan Feb 16th 2005 at 9:42AM

menumetersThe pick I had planned for today just happened to coincide with a question sent in via our ‘send us tips’ link, by Dennis from the Netherlands. Dennis, by the way, knows how to grab our attention… he started off by paying TUAW lots of compliments!

Dennis asked if we knew of any program that would monitor his net connection, “showing some cool graphs about howmany bit/bytes were being transported through my aiport extreme card. Maybe also showing some statistics, how many mb I transfered this week/month.”

The first app to come to mind was MenuMeters, from Raging Menace. MenuMeters is a set of true Menu Extras (aka SystemUIServer plugins, which means they can be reordered with command-drag and they remember their positions in the menubar across logins and restarts) that monitors CPU, memory, disk, and network statistics. It doesn’t show stats by day/week/month that I am aware of, but it does show just about everything else.

Using the MenuMeters preference pane, you select what information you want MenuMeters to display, what interval you want it to update and which icons to show in your menubar. You can even control how your PowerMate behaves in reaction to various CPU load conditions. Clicking on any of the menu extras pulls down more detailed information, making no stat more than a single click away.

MenuMeters is open-source freeware released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Download it today!



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Oliver

I've actually stopped using MenuMeters recently. I still love it, but I got sick of being told how much CPU I was using. I know that loading a couple of pages in Safari while listening to iTunes consumes 100% of my lowly 450mhz G3 processor, and I just don't need to be reminded of that all the time :-p

February 16 2005 at 12:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
john

Menumeters is about the only third party system enhancement I have ever installed and decided to keep. I used ipulse for a while, decided it was a gorgeous piece of well written software ... that I didn't really have a use for and took up too much screen real estate. So I don't use it. Menumeters stays out of my way, right up there next to my airport meter & modem status, telling me only CPU load and network tx/rx and NOTHING ELSE I don't need. I can't say I've ever used aquamon, but for my money (or lack thereof) menumeters is a great bit of software.

February 16 2005 at 11:16 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dennis

Thanks all. Great help. I didn't look at ipulse (because i think 12,95 is a bit to much for some graphs). I did look at Aquamon, and I think it's a bit too geeky for what i want. all those digits are too much. Until now menumeter does just do what I want it to do, although the graphs could look a bit sexier.

February 16 2005 at 10:57 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Thad

It can make your PowerMate glow based on CPU usage? Killer! I'm downloading this!

February 16 2005 at 10:34 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Laurie

Excellent suggestions, Oliver. I'm going to check those out myself!

February 16 2005 at 10:29 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Oliver

MenuMeters rules, but Dennis from the Netherlands might also be interested in iPulse or AquaMon. http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17033 and http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14386&vid=120011

February 16 2005 at 10:05 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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