Product Website: LIUtilities

Price: WinTasks Standard Edition: WinTasks Professional Edition: $47.00 (USD)

Background:

Have you ever wondered why your newly bought Pentium 4 seems to be going far too slow for your likings? Chances are the problem is that you have far too many programs that run on startup when Windows starts. WinTasks gives you a powerful, user-friendly, easy-to-use interface to help you manage what starts when you start your computer - Not what your computer wants to start when it starts.

Information:

WinTasks shows you what is running in your computer's background on one easy-to-read screen. Included on this screen which I thought was rather useful is the location of where everything starts from. This can give you a general sense of making sure that everything that is supposed to be running is running, and nothing that isn't supposed to be running is running. Not only does it give you the ability to see what processes are running, but also what programs start when Windows starts. Prior to using WinTasks I literally thought that my computer was running hunkey-dory and that nothing else was running that I didn't want to be running. Until I checked the Autostart feature in WinTasks, I had no idea that C:\Program Files\DownloadWare\hw.exe was running without me knowing. It turns out that is one of those programs that slaps you in the face with more ads whenever you open up a certain site.

After finding my first target of unwanted rubbish, I was able to quickly get it out of my computer's startup queue, freeing up some more processing power by simply highlighting the unwanted item, selecting "Disable" and then "Remove". (However, I do not think it is necessary to do it in that sequence, I most likely could have just gone straight to "Remove".)

In addition to showing you what's starting and running when you turn your computer on, WinTasks also provides you with real-time graphs that show the amount of processing power that is being taken up by each process. This way incase you really need to save processing power, you can take out some of the high-demanding ones as opposed to just "guessing" and see which ate up the most processing power.

Overall:

If you're concerned about how much bang for the buck you can get out of your computer's processing power like I am, you'll like this program because you have the potential to free up a tremendous amount of processing power right at your fingertips. This mean you will not have to wait as long for many programs to open up, and you can do more in a less amount of time. Even if you aren't too concerned about the bang for the buck theory, it's still a good idea to know what you have running in the background. You know, to keep an eye on possible things like Sub 7 servers, or some other remote administration device that will let other script kiddies gain access to your computer without you knowing. WinTasks will let you stop that, too.

The main screen of WinTasks Professional	All programs that are running upon start up
Amount of processing power used by one process	Log of all programs launched

---