The macosxhints Rating:
[Score: 8 out of 10]
- Developer: Mike Piatek-Jimenez
/ [Product Page]
- Price: Free
XRG runs in a window, either vertical or horizontal, and can graph a number of objects, such as CPU usage, memory usage, battery status, network activity, and disk usage. You can also track weather at various reporting stations and various stocks that you're interested in. You have full control over fonts, color, transparency, anti-aliasing, drop shadows, and other such eye candy (there are even downloadble themes); here's a shrunken view of how XRG looks while running at the bottom of my screen (full size version).
While running, XRG does use a bit of CPU -- about 7% on my PowerBook, less than 1.5% on the G5. However, I've never noticed its impact on anything else I've been doing on the PowerBook, so I'm not overly concerned about the CPU usage.
Yes, there are tons of other tools out there that do similar things -- the Pick of the Week isn't meant to identify the best product at doing something. Rather, it's just my way of identifying programs that I think are unique, useful, or interesting ... and XRG is just such a program.
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