PC Performance

Sure enough a computer can use all of its resources to perform your tasks, but overloading it might make it highly unstable, or even damage it completely. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on resource usage when performing complex tasks, and if you’re looking for a simple tool to help out, PC Performance might be what you need.

The application isn’t bundled inside a setup package, so you’re free to take it for a spin as soon as download is done. Chances are you encounter some issues because of the lack of recent updates, but this can easily be solved by running it under compatibility settings. Since it’s portable, you can easily carry it on a USB flash drive.

A pretty compact window shows up on launch, with three sliders to show boot HDD space used, memory, and CPU usage. These bars start filling up instantly according to computer resource usage. There are also value field tags which show percentage of use to get a better idea of how things are going.

Accessing the options panel expands the window to unveil several controls. On the visual side, there’s the possibility to enable window transparency to make it better blend with your desktop, with a corresponding slider to adjust the transparency intensity.

Apart from visuals, there’s also a slider which is used to set update interval, with different values between slow and fast. Unfortunately, the application can’t be used to generate any reports, or have alerts configured when usage exceeds specific limits. A neat trick is to add a shortcut to the Startup folder so it’s ready when you reach the desktop.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that PC Performance is a lightweight application with no particular elements to make it stand out from the crowd. The level of info shown isn’t really impressive, and the possible compatibility issues might make you look for alternatives.