I sometimes write about freeware programs that I think would benefit an IT Professional, especially to help speed up their PCs. It’s funny how most IT pros have computers that run extremely slow.
It’s not that the hardware is old or out-of-date, it’s simply the fact that we install crap loads of software onto our computers for “testing” purposes and never seem to get rid of anything. I know this because every 6 months I have to reformat my computer because there is simply too much junk clogging it up!
If you’re like me, you probably have a lot of programs that start up when Windows starts, including anti-spyware, anti-virus, email, IM, desktop search, VPN client, etc, etc. On average, I have close to 90 processes running in Task Manager! That’s quite a bit and requires a lot of memory and a fast processor.
But even with a fast processor, some processes always start acting up and end up taking more CPU cycles than they should. Point in case is my anti-spyware program that will slow the entire computer to a crawl in order to perform a scan.
Process Lasso is a nifty freeware program that improves your PC’s responsiveness and stability. How does it do that? Well, it basically controls your processes so they no single one can overtake all the CPU power of the system, which can lead to freezes or hangs.
Instead it uses what is called ProBalance technology to intelligently adjust the priority of running programs so that programs that are acting badly will not interfere with your ability to use your computer.
Process Lasso consists of two parts: the management console (GUI), where you can configure all of the Process Lasso options and see events and information in real-time. The image above is the management console.
The second part is the silent background engine that does all of the actual work of managing processes, etc. Each run separately, so you don’t need to have the GUI console open in order for Process Lasso to work.
In the graph, you can see the processor use and the responsiveness of the system. Ideally, the green line should be very high and the red line very low. At the bottom of the screen in the Actions log box, you will see any of the changes that Process Lasso makes to the processes running on your system.
Process Lasso has a good number of features and here are some of my favorite:
- Quickly set rules for process priorities, affinities, and more
- Setup optional balloon tips to receive notification when actions are taken
- Easy to understand system responsiveness and calculation graph display
- ProBalance dynamic priority optimization
- Foreground thread and process boosting for better performance
- Limit the number of instances of one program
- Default process priorities and default CPU affinities (configure processes to always start at a desired priority or CPU affinity)
- Auto-terminate undesirable processes
- Includes the VistaMMSC utility to fine tune Vista multimedia scheduler parameters
- Core engine only takes up 1-3 MB of RAM when you turn off the graphical user interface
Note that Process Lasso is not a replacement for the Task Manager, it is basically a process priority optimizer. If you have a lot of processes running on your machine and you want them to all run efficiently, then try out this program.
After installing it on my computer, I could definitely see an improvement in working with my currently open applications. It was faster to switch and the program loads more quickly. I am definitely going to continue using this program to improve my computer performance and speed. Enjoy!
Will this work well with games?