Nine Benefits of Windows Task Manager


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Despite being one of the most useful utilities that come with Windows, it’s rarely or never used by many Windows PC users. Here are some of the uses of Task Manager utility that you should know:

  1. Check CPU and RAM consumption for each application: Some programs may unusually consume too much RAM and CPU resources. You should check it immediately if you feel that the computer is working slower than usual. If it’s confirmed, you need to close the program and restart it. This situation could happen if you have been working with large project files, such as Photoshop .PSD files.
  2. Check current usage of CPU and RAM: In normal situations, your CPU and RAM utilizations should be under 50 percent. If any of them has reached 75 percent or more, you may start to experience reduction in speed.
  3. Check programs that perform read and write operations the most often: The Resource Monitor section record disk activity of your program, in bytes per second. If one or two programs have become disk-intensive, you may need to close them to regain performance.
  4. Check how long a program has been running: Windows Task Manager is useful for knowing how long a program has been running. To do this, go to ‘View’ and choose ‘Select Columns’. Check CPU time and click on OK. The Processes tab should show the time elapsed for all running programs.
  5. Stop background programs: Often, you have background programs that you don’t need, that consume much CPU resources and RAM. Unless you have 16GB or more RAM, you should regularly close RAM that you don’t need.
  6. Send messages to other users: In Users tab, you can find everyone who is currently logged in the computer, through local sessions or remote desktop connections. Click any username in the Users tab and then click on Send Message. A dialog box will appear. Type in title and message, then click OK to send your message.
  7. Arrange program windows: Right click on the taskbar to choose windows arrangement. There are multiple options such as side by side, cascade and stacked. In the application tab, press and hold CTRL button and click a program that you want to configure. Right click on the selection, then choose Tile Vertically, Tile Horizontally or Cascade.
  8. Monitor network activity: If takes too long to download a file, there could be issues with your network. Go to the Networking tab to check Internet usage for each adapter. You can find out whether an application is using too much Internet data, which may cause videos to load slowly.
  9. Check programs that are using the Internet: If your Internet bandwidth is limited, you should some irrelevant programs from using your Internet connection. In the Performance tab, look for Resource Monitor and click on it. Applications that are using Internet connection will be shown in the Network tab.

As you can see, Windows Task Manager can be a quite indispensable application. It’s a wonderful productivity tool for any computer user.