Finding what worked your processor hardest, with Pulse
Pulse by Zaweba ranks apps by the CPU time they used today, yesterday or this week, so you can see what kept the processor busy while you were away.
Task managers are good at telling you what is busy right now. They're no help with what was busy an hour ago, when the PC felt slow and then recovered before you could look. The top CPU users list on the History page in Pulse by Zaweba fills that gap. It ranks apps by the CPU time they used over a period you choose.
Finding the list
Open History from the View menu, with Ctrl+3, or from the tray menu. Use the Show selector to pick Today, Yesterday or This week. The top CPU users list ranks your apps by the processor time they used across that period, with the hungriest at the top.
CPU time is a fairer measure than a snapshot of percentages. An app that ran flat out for five minutes and an app that ticked over gently all day can end up with similar totals, and both are worth knowing about. The ranking tells you which programs cost your processor the most over the whole period.
Where the figures come from
Every minute, Pulse stores each busy app's CPU seconds along with the machine's overall figures, in a history file kept on your PC. The list adds those minutes up. Because the history keeps going while Pulse sits in the tray, you get a record of the time you weren't watching, which is usually the time you most want to know about.
A simple routine for a slow PC
When someone says the PC was slow this morning, this is the order that works well. Open History and choose Today. Look at the CPU and memory graph first to find when the slow patch happened. Then read the top CPU users list to see which programs did the most work.
Compare it with Yesterday. If the same app is high on both days, it's part of the PC's normal life, perhaps an antivirus scan or an indexing job. If it only appears today, something changed, such as an update or a newly installed program.
Then switch to the Live page and find the app with the Find box. If it's still busy, you'll see it now. If the name is unfamiliar, Open file location shows the folder its exe lives in.
Reading it sensibly
Long-running apps naturally build up CPU time. A browser you use all day will often sit near the top of This week simply because it's always open. That isn't a fault. The list is most telling when something you don't use much ranks highly, or when a program's position jumps from one day to the next.
Background jobs often run while the PC is idle, on purpose, so they don't get in your way. Finding one at the top of last night's list may just mean it did its work at a sensible time.
Going further
High CPU use usually means heat as well. The temperature peaks list on the same History page shows each peak with the three busiest apps in that minute, which often confirms what the top CPU users list suggests.
If you'd like a longer view, Settings, History lets you keep from 1 to 365 days, with 30 as the default. More days means a bigger file, but the record is small minute by minute, and it never leaves the PC. With a month or more behind you, Pulse by Zaweba makes it easy to tell a new problem from an old habit.
