Extended System Tray

Depending on the task at hand, various system settings might need to be kept under close watch to avoid accidental loss of performance and data. This is done through complex graphs and monitors, or some as slim as Extended System Tray which quietly sit on the desktop to display power, CPU, and memory consumption.

Since it’s not a stand-alone application, it relies on its host to properly function, namely Yahoo! Widget Engine. It can thus be easily carried on a USB flash drive along with an entire collection of such gadgets to enable wherever needed.

The gadget benefits from all the enhancements Yahoo! Widget Engine brings to every addin. This means it can be dragged around the desktop to a suitable position, have opacity level configured through a slider, forced to stay on top of other windows to always be in plain sight, or ignore mouse interaction to make clicks in the background possible.

It’s capable of showing real time usage for memory and CPU, as well as Wi-Fi and battery power strength which mostly comes in handy for laptops. Accessing the settings panel makes it possible to adjust refresh interval for both groups through a couple of dedicated sliders with configurable time from 1 to 15 seconds.