14 DAY TRIAL // Widgets have become a constant in our life, especially now when there is the Yahoo Widget Engine that allows us to keep all sorts of little windows on our desktop. A widget is practically a little window designed to display information that is useful for the users.
Yahoo Widget Engine contains lots of widgets that were developed to help the user with all sorts of info about his/her computer or other things, like the weather, different locations on Earth, mail check, time in various parts of the world, etc. You can even launch a personal Yahoo! Notepad or contacts widget. Widget fans can use a widget for harnessing their contacts on Yahoo.
Today's widget is a tool for checking the computer memory use or abuse. Its name is iStatMemory and the developer's name is Marc Edwards. I will not bother you any more with the trial period or the cost of the application, as it comes free of charge. I will tell you instead that you are going to need almost 100KB to store the little fellow on your hard drive.
The interface (if we can call it this way) is very nicely drawn and it's quite appealing. The futuristic looks of the application lead you into thinking how much has technology evolved. The widget looks like a clock for the computer memory, just like a speedometer or a pressure clock.
When I first saw the application I did not quite know what to think or how to use it (it is the first time I put my hand on such an application). I was facing a perfectly round clock that was displaying the status of my computer memory and nothing else. The percentage of the memory use was a little too high, so I checked my Task Manager to kill some of the memory eating, useless processes. Then I had the idea of clicking inside that clock and more information slid from one side giving me a deeper insight of the memory status.
It was divided into two "windows": one for the real memory and one for the virtual memory. The information is about the amount of the memory used and how much you have left. After I saw that I thought this could not be all the application has to give the users and I tried my luck with a left click. A drop-down menu appeared, giving me further options: the About menu, the Widget Preferences, the Update option and the Close widget option.
In Preferences I discovered two menus: General and Window. The General menu contained only the setting for the frequency update (from three seconds to twenty seconds). The Window menu gave me the option to choose the window level at which I wanted the widget to appear. The Lock Window Positions check box assured me that - if I enable it - the widget's position will be locked in place.
I left the goodies at the end, meaning the option that really made me smile. The application gives the user the opportunity to set the opacity/transparency of the window, from 20% to 100%. It is not too hard to do it, as you have a slider you must drag to the left or to the right, depending on haw transparent you want the window to be.
That is all the application has to give. I must warn you that, in order to use any widgets, you have to install Yahoo widget Engine on your computer. Do not worry when you see the widget extension. All you have to do is install the Yahoo Widget Engine and move all your widgets in one place in order not to lose them.
The Good
The application is beautifully made and it does its job very well.
The Bad
One would think what could this application have wrong. Well, I can't help myself sharing with you that I was surprised by the amount of memory the little one uses: almost 10MB of computer memory. This is not to be overlooked at all.
The Truth
A simple application that does no more and no less than what it says.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
