Another great program

I’ve come to realize that there are a lot of programs that I would certainly enjoy using more. In particular I’m talking about SIW. It’s a system info program that has a few cool and unexpected twists. If you’re like a typical person, you probably can’t name off everything and anything pertaining to your computer. Yes, there are hardcore power users that can, but that’s typically not the norm (but I would have to say that general computer knowledge has indeed expanded in today’s society).

Gabriel Topola gives users a free system information program that gathers system info settings and properties. It displays information about Operating System, Installed Programs, Processes, Services, Serial Numbers, Users, Open Files, System uptime, Network, Network Shares, and more, as well as real-time monitors for CPU, Memory, Page File usage and network traffic.

That’s just a general outline of the capabilities that this program has.

What’s Inside

Inside this program is a great way to get to know your system on a more personal level. The program is set up in the typical Explorer style. It is split into two separate window panes: the left shows you your drop down menu while the right shows you the information on what you’ve selected on the right.

It’s separate into three different menus: Software, Hardware, and Network. I’ll go through the important parts of each to give you a sense of what’s inside and also to see just what you can do.

Under ‘Software’ you can view your properties from the Operating System files, properties from your System Directory, Installed Programs, your applications, your drivers (which is a huge benefit when you’re hunting for a specific driver but don’t know what it is), your multiple databases, the audio/video codecs you have on your machine.

I thought a cool little tool is the ‘Secrets’ tab. This shows you your current Windows key and your MS Office key if you have it installed. In this view you can also see logons for Outlook and their appropriate passwords.

The "Groups and Users" group view was useful to those admins. I did have some trouble with the program lagging whenever I switched to and from the "Protected Files" view. It reloads every file each time the view is entered and can take up some system resources and time, but that was barely noticeable since you can switch to another group without having to reload everything.

Moving onto the "Hardware" group, you get the typical information you’d expect to see. You can check out info on everything from your motherboard to your monitor. A general classification of the group includes your System Info, motherboard, BIOS, devices, memory, Video, system slots, network cards, storage devices ports and a few more mentionables.

I thought the last part of the main interface was also useful. Under "Network" you’re able to check out the properties of the network, you can do a neighborhood scan, check out open ports and shared directories while checking out the basics like "My Network places."

I thought that SIW gives you the ‘Open Ports’ group. Inside you’re able to see which ports are going to which programs and exactly to where. While giving you some details on the program and its pathname.

The Little Extras

I thought that there were some cool little perks you got with SIW as well, I especially liked that at a moment’s notice you can check out your computer and network usage in a graphical interface. You can even randomly test OpenGL. What I got a big kick out of was the little ‘Eureka" ability to detect any passwords that have been auto-filled, I mean this little tool even gives you the mouse position, the handle and the window caption (including window class and text). It’s these small features that are like the topping on the cake that I want to constantly take a bite from.

The Good

I enjoyed using SIW extremely. It’s got a nifty little interface that’s simple to get. It offers tons of system information with a few added bonuses on the side.

The Bad

The program lagged on me for a few seconds when it was in the middle of retrieving file information, but that’s understandable since it was going through thousands of files.

The Truth

The truth is that this program is effective, it’s small and it’s practical. You don’t need to be a power user to use it, but at the same time the information provided helps both power users and rookies alike. The cool part of it is that you don’t even have to install it so you can take it anywhere with a USB flash drive. I’d say that this little piece of software should be taken along with admins wherever they go.

Check out the screenshots below.