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Vista has some surprisingly interesting and sometimes useful new features. One such feature I stumbled across is the desktop resource monitor. This is a nifty little tool whose access was added through task manager. Task manager is a tool I use religiously on every desktop I operate and even those that I don't regularly use but I'm in a position to have to clean up malware or other bad programs or solve other problems. In fact, I have task manager running minimized at all times on my computers (hide to tray option) to enable me to watch CPU usage on my desktop or laptop.
One of things that I have found in Vista to be useful but required third party monitoring type applications on XP for the same purpose is Vista's resource Monitor. A nice step beyond just task manager, Vista's desktop resource monitor reveals more information in an instant that can be useful for those of us that need that kind of information. Information such as what programs are communicating on the network and with what remote computer. Although there are command line tools in both XP and Vista that can display a list of applications that are listening on the network and also talking, having this information at the ready through a GUI interface I find to be much more handier.
Though not common, a useful effect of having it in GUI form through resource monitor is if there is a need to show a regular user some information about their computer, they will understand the pretty GUI side more easily than they would the command line output on the desktop even if it showing essentially the same information.
Resource manager can be found simply by starting windows task manager on the desktop or laptop. Then click on the performance tab and then at the bottom click on the resource manager button. This new button when clicked open resource manager on the desktop and a world of more information about what the desktop or laptop is doing.
In a quick glance, you are able to see some vital information and insight to what your computer is doing. CPU, disk, network and memory information are all at fingure tips reach. The one I find useful now and would have liked to have had this in XP over the years is the the network resource overview.
The network resource monitor will show all the running programs that are "talking" on the latop to the network. This is a useful view of what's going on in that if there is a network latency at a glance, this resource view may be able to give a way an application on the desktop or laptop that is using too much bandwidth or that should not be using any at all.
Why waste time travelling to a location to provide computer support or even worse in many cases, trying to talk a person through steps on the remote computer through the phone. This is, in my opinion, even worse that going to the location unless of course the place where the computer, desktop,server, or laptop is located is too far away.
Talking people through troubleshooting steps is a very painful task. A simple process that could take an experienced person several minutes to maybe ten can turn into an hour with a person on the remote side that has no idea of how to perform the actions or functions that you are requesting or have never even seen a command line.
Remote support is the best alternative and solution to make more efficient use of computer skills and efforts.
