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Why Power widgets?

General topics related to Rainmeter.
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Blackbane
Posts: 1
Joined: January 19th, 2013, 11:13 pm

Why Power widgets?

Post by Blackbane »

This has been bugging me, but almost everyone that uses desktop widgets always seem to want a widget that monitors their power, fan speed, CPU, memory....

To me it seems just extra clutter.... how often is it useful?
(I know many reasons WHY it would be useful, just to me not enough to add a distracting widget on my main desktop)

The only thing I can think of is that the type of people who like to tweak desktops are generally more power users, and I'm the weird one that mainly uses rainmeter to organize and make my desktop pretty.
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moshi
Posts: 1740
Joined: November 13th, 2012, 9:53 pm

Re: Why Power widgets?

Post by moshi »

it's the original purpose of Rainmeter. let me quote:
Rainmeter 0.1 for litestep
This is a simple CPU/MEM Meter plugin for Litestep. It is a LoadModule plugin and not a Wharf module as most of the others. This one works only in Windows 2000 (and maybe in NT4). Win9x is not supported.
The configuration is done in the Rainmeter.ini file. The settings should be quite clear, so I'm not going to explain them here. I might implement equivalent step.rc settings later (as well as better documentation).
personally i don't get that obsession with fan speeds and cpu temperature either, but it's not like anyone is forcing me to use such a skin.
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Chuck
Posts: 26
Joined: September 8th, 2011, 8:43 pm
Location: Québec, Qc, Can

Re: Why Power widgets?

Post by Chuck »

As an IT guy: because everyone that isn't too familiar with computer inner workings are mad impressed when you open your laptop and all sorts of real info pops arround. L33t sk1llz.

More seriously though, I used it when programming. It was negligeable at first, but when running a heavier program (like a game, persay) I like to be able to tell that the CPU usage is 60% higher when running something I made (because honestly, it shouldn't be) and therefor I can try and optimize it.
As for temp, I never got the plugin to work so I never bothered, but my laptop does have the bad habit of overheating.. well the laptop's dead now, but that's actually an info I'd have liked to have, so I could know when it was about to turn red and slow it down.


Though frankly, to be honest, I just like how it looks. I love setting up layouts to go with backgrounds.

That was my reasons, there are many like and unlike them, but those are mines.

Chuck
MikeG621
Posts: 87
Joined: March 18th, 2013, 1:59 pm

Re: Why Power widgets?

Post by MikeG621 »

On my work machine I run a lot of intensive analysis software and CAD programs, so I always have CPU/HD/RAM/Network usage running along with CPU temps. I run them at home too, but at home I don't run the risk of completely maxing out 16 GB of RAM or downloading a 60+GB results file like I do here. System monitoring helps with troubleshooting and can highlight potential problems before you get to the "oh @#%!" stage.
Stan
Posts: 65
Joined: January 24th, 2013, 9:09 pm

Re: Why Power widgets?

Post by Stan »

There is nothing requiring that the meters must be showing all of the time, mine do not.

But, I like to take a peek from time to time to see what's going on. I have them on when doing computer maintenance or some other thing that may use a lot of resources.

Rainmeter does a lot more then meter what you described.

And most importantly .... It's fun!
Ice
Posts: 7
Joined: June 19th, 2013, 3:39 pm

Re: Why Power widgets?

Post by Ice »

Well for most people its there just for nice look but for some developers and low end PC users its a very useful.When you have 2.5 Dual Core and 1gb ram you rely want to know how much resources you use so that you can tweak PC a bit.Also for some people like me that do not use antivirus that fancy meter is a virus detector (It goes high when PC is unloaded its a virus)
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Chuck
Posts: 26
Joined: September 8th, 2011, 8:43 pm
Location: Québec, Qc, Can

Re: Why Power widgets?

Post by Chuck »

Coming soon: Rainmeter AntiVirus skin. :rofl:
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Sam12345
Posts: 80
Joined: February 27th, 2021, 9:41 pm
Location: London

Re: Why Power widgets?

Post by Sam12345 »

I have 2 of what you could call "power widgets" CPU and download speed.
I use it for two reasons:
1: it looks cool and fun
2:I like knowing internet speeds as my internet is patchy recently and I want to know what it can handle, and sometimes i have demanding tasks running in the background and I want to be able to see what is available on the computer easily.
I think It also looks nice: ;-)
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