Filed under: Software
Monitor your Mac's health with CheckUp
Geeks love to try out new applications, but hardcore nerds (like me) like installing new utilities.At first glance, CheckUp by App4Mac is a system monitor. Use it to keep track of your processor(s), RAM, disks, network activity and processes. But that's just the beginning.
The UI is very nice. Each set of functions gets its own window. For instance, the "Profile" pane displays information like your machine's serial number, OS, processor(s), IP address, MAC address and more.
The "System" pane lists all installed applications and their version numbers, plus all operating systems that your machine will support, including Windows and Linux. A drop-down menu lets you switch between installed applications, fonts, drivers, Internet plugins, preference panes and login items.
The re-sizable window moves from pane to pane with a snazzy 3-D transition (either cube or swap) and is very easy to read. I especially like the "Processors" pane which lets you pop out the meters measuring processor activity.
Here's the cool part of CheckUp. You can use it to monitor a remote computer, either on your LAN or across the internet. This is very handy for IT pros who could use a quick-and-dirty glance at a far-away machine.
The purchase fee of $29US includes lifetime updates. If you're looking for a stylish system monitor that's actually fun to use, give CheckUp a try.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rockstar said 1:08PM on 9-04-2008
Yay, $30 for a tool that shows you what you can already see... even the remote monitoring - if you're that concerned about it, you're probably vnc'd to the machine anyway!
Sorry guys, I wanted to find value in this program, even back when I first heard about it, but I'm an IT Pro of 15 years, and i don't see it.
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Tom said 1:16PM on 9-04-2008
Maybe you are blind !!! A cool user interface is a big value and you cannot uninstall applications with Mac OS X. CheckUp do it very well.
Matt said 1:12PM on 9-04-2008
I tried this out a few weeks back, wasn't too impressed with it.
Really cool GUI (okay, that was impressive) but all the info was nothing and could be gotten elsewhere.
I suppose this might be useful for some, but it seemed over priced to me for what it has to offer.
Cool eyecandy though.
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Gewalt said 1:15PM on 9-04-2008
Dude, its an app for a mac. We gladly pay for eyecandy. If we chose function over form, we would all be using linux, not osx.
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tves said 1:30PM on 9-04-2008
It seems overpriced, but for new mac users STILL trying to figure these kinda things out coming from a Windows environment, I'd love to see how to do/view these things in Mac 101...
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brian said 7:30PM on 9-04-2008
So, a $29 version of iStat? Weak sauce!
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SG said 2:32PM on 9-04-2008
$30 for something you can get from other tools that have a nice gui and also requires some stupid installer and a reboot to get working. to make matters worse you need to manually remove a startup item/daemon when uninstalling, junk. not even gonna try it or install it.
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John said 4:12PM on 9-04-2008
IT pros know how ssh works >.>
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zahzuh said 9:13PM on 9-04-2008
"The "System" pane lists all installed applications and their version numbers, plus all operating systems that your machine will support, including Windows and Linux."
That is useless. I'm sure it says the same thing on every computer, except for 10.3 on intels. I installed this on my generic OSx86 Hackintosh and it says I can install windows or linux with a virtualization application.
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