WinTasks 5 Professional Review: A Windows Task Manager Upgrade?

WinTasks 5 Professional Review: A Windows Task Manager Upgrade?
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Introduction

WinTasks 5 Professional is designed to tweak the performance of your computer. It takes Windows Task Manager to the next level, helping you to eradicate applications that could cause potential, or even fatal, trouble for your computer.

Let’s take WinTasks 5 Pro on a test drive and see how it faired.

User Interface (4 out of 5)

WinTasks 5 Pro is no prettier than Windows Task Manager, but then again, I wasn’t expecting frilly pink flowers and elephants in tutus either. The difference between WinTasks 5 Pro and Windows Task Manager is that WinTasks 5 Pro is packed full of additional–not to mention helpful–information. The main screen not only shows you the names of the processes running, it also shows you the location of the executable that is running the process, the priority level, threads, CPU and memory usage, the time the process was started, and more. [See Image 1]

Price to Value (3 out of 5)

WinTasks 5 Pro is $49.95. Price to value? That depends. Although the user interface is very descriptive and presented nicely for the unseasoned computer user, I still wouldn’t say WinTasks 5 Pro is for the novice. If, on the other hand, you’re a programmer and want to take advantage of WinTasks 5 Pro’s logging and scripting features and want to easily identify troubles in programming environments, like unnecessary multithreads and processes, then WinTasks 5 Pro might just bring you great value for your buck.

Installation & Setup (4 out of 5)

What’s Hot:

Installing WinTasks 5 Pro was a piece of cake. There was nothing atypical about it. I downloaded the trial version and simply entered the license/serial key. Voila! WinTasks 5 was off and running.

What’s Not:

WinTasks 5 does not support Windows Vista.

Product Features (4 out of 5)

I’ll cut to the chase here and put WinTasks 5 Pro features in point form to save you from my superfluous babble:

  • Most excellent information about your system, with an honorable mention to the CPU and memory usage graphs, where you can view up to the last 24 hours of statistics. [See Image 2]
  • WinTasks 5 has a Process Library that permits you to read detailed information about a process (as mentioned in the User Interface section of this review). The Process Library also allows you to report and comment on any information you see is missing from a process. You can also write personal notes for any selected process – which can be copied to a new system without difficulty. [See Image 3]
  • Easily change process priorities.
  • Add any process to a Block/Allow list.
  • Auto start options – such as enabling and disabling auto start programs and remove or add auto start programs from the registry. [See Image 4]
  • DLL information that is printable and exportable.
  • Scripts: Customize to automatically terminate suspicious processes and to control priorities. When certain conditions are met, scripts can stop existing processes and start new ones, letting you remove processes which are no longer needed and to automate complicated tasks. So - in other words - you can program it to stop a selected process if it’s using X % of memory, or if it’s using more than X amount you can lower its priority.

Help & Support (2 out of 5)

What’s Not:

WinTasks 5 Pro’s Help file is a PDF. Meaning, if you don’t have a PDF reader installed on your computer, Help does not work. Coincidentally, the computer I was testing WinTasks 5 Pro on didn’t have a PDF reader. The unfortunate thing about this is that if the user doesn’t know the Help is a PDF and doesn’t have the right tools to read a PDF, WinTasks 5 Pro does nothing to explain this problem. Trying to access Help from the main application in this situation will simply do nothing. There is no prompt telling you that you need to install a PDF reader. Another reason WinTasks 5 Pro may not be suitable for a novice. 

Images

Main Window

Stats

Process Library

Autostarted Programs

Suggested Features

Support for Windows Vista.

Conclusion

Comparing WinTasks 5 Professional to Windows Task Manager, WinTasks 5 Pro certainly does a better job of explaining things. However, as previously mentioned, I don’t believe WinTasks 5 Pro is for the novice. Adjusting your system’s configuration can spell disaster, so just because things seem to be explained quite well, don’t go throwing caution to the wind–five words of advice that should be taken prior to running WinTasks 5 Pro: “System Restore > Create Restore Point.”

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