14 DAY TRIAL // Process Lasso
Somewhat different from a regular process manager, Process Lasso manages to provide you with a big palette of options ranging from the basic ones that allow you to set process priority and CPU affinity to the more exotic ones like configuring process instance limits or setting the startup method.
One downside for the application is that it is not 100% freeware, meaning that you can benefit from it freely only for home use. However, commercial licenses are not too expensive, considering that its a one time $19.98 pay, which brings free lifetime updates.
Just like other process managers on the market, this one too presents a graph showing system resource usage. The information available regards CPU use, system responsiveness, process restraint and memory load. As for the running processes, the level of details is so fine that you even have the creation time, publisher and CPU usage average value in percentage.
Unlike the pieces of software of its kind, Process Lasso provides a log of the activity of the processes on your computer. Thus, you'll know exactly the date and time down to the second of a process being terminated, started, changes in priority, together with the user session the action took place.
The particularities of the app let you take care of each process running on the system and even of those that are not yet launched. Default priority can be set for each item by typing in the process name and adjusting the priority (wildcards are supported). The same goes for CPU affinity. One very interesting and useful option is limiting the number of process instances per user session.
Process Lasso brings a “proprietary algorithm that temporarily lowers the priority of some background processes in an effort to keep your system responsive during high loads.” This is called ProBalance and its parameters can be configured in terms of setting an upper threshold for the system overall CPU usage, per process triggering limit, milliseconds to wait before taking action, as well as the lower limit (per process CPU usage) when ProBalance should stop.
Although it may appear as an easy-to-use piece of software, Process Lasso makes available a set of options that should be tampered with only if you know what you are doing. One wrong configuration could lead to faulty process management that has repercussions on the overall system performance.
Besides the basic and common process settings, Process Lasso also provides uncommon options that, configured properly, prove to be highly efficient.
Process Explorer, Bill2's Process Manager, Extended Task Manager, Starter
