Heib News

The Windows Task Manager is a functional but basic tool for keeping an eye on what your computer's up to. If you want to go beyond the built-in tool and for more in depth information and control, check out these five alternatives.

Last week we asked you to share your favorite alternative to the Windows Task Manager, and now we're back with the five most popular nominees. Read over each entry, then don't forget to cast a vote for your favorite of the top five in the poll below.

Note: Clicking on the screenshots below will enlarge the screenshots to their original size.

Process Hacker (Windows, Free)

Anvir Task Manager (Windows, Basic: Free, Premium: $39.95)

Process Explorer (Windows, Free)

Process Explorer is the free and portable offering from Microsoft. Process Explorer is like the standard task manager on steroids. You still get a list of processes, you still see charts of your usage, but both give you significantly more information and control over the information. Unlike the default manager, Process Explorer makes it easy to track down which file is being held by which program and get to the bottom of computer mysteries like why a certain DLL or DOC file simply cannot be deleted. It also shows which service is performing which function so you'll never look at a long and repetitive list of Windows system executables that are indistinguishable from each other—every one will be associated with its function.

Extended Task Manager (Windows, Free)

If you want more than the default task manager can offer but you're not sure if you need some of the advanced featured offered by other nominees in this week's Hive Five, Extended Task Manager is a great compromise. Extended Task Manger can display locked files and which process is locking them, help you terminate specific processes to free files, provides a summary overview of your resource usage, and allows you to pause and resume processes. Note: we ended up having to test Extended Task Manager on one of our Windows XP machines after it failed to launch in Windows 7 64-bit. Whether this is a result of being launched in Windows 7 or in a 64-bit environment is unknown.

System Explorer (Windows, Free)

There's word from an indie record-label that iTunes LPs are not for the indies. Introduced at Apple's "It's Only Rock and Roll" event in September, the iTunes LP format adds "bigger than a matchbook" album art, song lyrics, video clips, and other extra content to albums sold through the iTunes store.

Brian McKinney of Chicago-based label Chocolate Lab Records saw some promise in the new format and started looking into the idea of producing for iTunes LPs himself. But the truly small labels may have a hard time getting in. McKinney spoke to the digital distribution manager at his label's distributor, who reportedly told him that Apple charges a $10,000 production fee for iTunes LPs. $10,000 may be less than the heads of Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and EMI spend on breakfast, but could be cost prohibitive for the little label that could (if it had $10,000 handy for each of its acts).

It's not just the cost that prohibits the little labels. According to McKinney, it's also Apple. McKinney says his dude in distribution was told "that LPs aren't being offered to indies and that there are only about 12 LPs being offered right now."

"Foul, foul, filth and foul," cries Cult of Mac's Pete Mortensen. Like a financial analyst moving a stock from "buy" to "sell," Mortensen says iTunes LP has gone from "the first digital album good enough to criticize," to "the first major content misstep in the history of the iTunes Store." Assuming that Chocolate Lab's distributor info is on the up-and-up, Mortensen thinks iTunes LP is "less a new format for music than it is a new form of paid advertising on the iTunes store."
While it may be romantic to think that iTunes was turning into the record store of old, isn't it also unrealistic? Apple wants its customers to "think different," but may not always want to do so itself. The Cupertino-company's relationships with the big four record labels has gone from antagonistic to swell to antagonistic to swell to... well you get the idea. It's not indies that have bemoaned the death of the LP... Perhaps they have, but they have not been as loud about it as major labels or acts such as Radiohead or Smashing Pumpkins. Variable pricing for tracks in the iTunes Store (announced at Macworld 2009) was one concession to the big four. It's possible that keeping iTunes LP for the majors only (for now anyway) was another.

Still, all hope is not lost for the indies. Apple may make the iTunes LP format more accessible down the road (assuming the format lasts long enough to get down the road). In the meantime, if indies want to capture some of the iTunes LP experience, there could be an app for that. They just have to build it or have it built. AppleInsider's Prince McLean suggests the idea, noting that "any artist can build a custom app delivering whatever artistically interesting content they can imagine into existence," meaning bringing album art, song lyrics, video clips, and other extra content is something the indies might be able to do, or might be able to hire someone to do.

There may even be advantages to hitting the App Store instead of the iTunes LP for the indies. Right now, extra content for iTunes LPs is married to the desktop or laptop. Buyers can take tracks with them on their iThings, but the lyrics, video clips, and so on stay on the computer. Where iTunes LP can go may change with the introduction of Apple's fabled tablet or an Apple TV update, but that remains to be seen. Additionally, iTunes LPs are pretty passive. Sure there's a lot of content, but - once it's released - it is what it is. No uploading new content. No adding new features. No interacting with fans. The iTunes LP is a digital package set in stone (unless they are sold as part of an iTunes Pass).

On the flip-side, iTunes LPs would be great for indies today since there are still under 20 iTunes LPs available. With a quick production turn around, the local bar-band could share a pretty exclusive space with Pearl Jam (iTunes link), Dave Matthews Band (iTunes link), and The Doors (iTunes link). Compare that to the 85,000-plus applications in the App Store and the attraction of an iTunes LP likely rises.

There are many ways that this could be much ado about nothing. It's possible that what Chocolate Lab heard was not Apple's official policy. It's possible that it is official policy but that it'll change relatively soon. It's possible that the big four record labels will drag their heels, overcharge, and kill the format in its infancy. It's possible that people won't warm up to iTunes LP as a format. For now, though, word of barred access for the indies has some in a spin.

It's big. It's ugly. And it's made from recycled parts, at least for now. It's called the "Frankencamera" — and it might someday change the way you take pictures.

Computer scientists at Stanford University say the new camera works something like an iPhone: It can be altered in nearly infinite ways, depending on the applications downloaded to it.

Even the best digital camera on the market today has lots of limitations, the professor behind the prototype, Marc Levoy, tells NPR's Guy Raz.

Say you want to take a photo of your child playing with a new toy in a dark room, near a bright window. It's tough to do now because of the variations in lighting within that single frame. If Junior's face is visible and bright, the tree and the sky through the window will be bleached out. If the scene outside comes out just right, Junior will be so underexposed you won't be able to see the glee on his face.

Not so with the Frankencamera, says Levoy. For the prototype, he and his colleagues developed a program that instructs the camera to take two rapid shots if a frame has both dark and light parts. One shot exposes correctly for the dark; one shot exposes correctly for the light. The program then merges the two images into one, taking the best parts from each.

And what if a camera could do the same thing for focus — take three shots, focusing on different things in each frame, and merge them into one crystal-clear shot?

According to Levoy, these are just a couple of examples of how programmers could change the future of photography with the Frankencamera. The key is that the camera uses a Linux operating system. All digital cameras are essentially minicomputers, says Levoy, and they can be modified a bit by the photographer. But the manufacturer determines what features are available. Linux is "open source," which means the camera owner can change everything about the electronic guts.

Photography took an enormous leap about 30 years ago, after Willard Boyle and George Smith came up with the "electronic eye" sensor that allowed cameras to ditch film and go digital. Boyle and Smith won the Nobel Prize for Physics this past week for their work. But Levoy says that digital photography has not progressed as fast as it should have since then — and that's what he's hoping to change.

Still, the Frankencamera is only a prototype at the moment. Presumably, it will become smaller and more elegant over time. But Levoy says his team is not planning to try to compete with Canon or Nikon. "Our goal is not to make a product. Our goal is to try and push traditional camera makers to incorporate more of these flexible ways of producing images in their cameras."

And, he says, their goal is to try to make 1 of every 5 of the photos you snap a keeper, rather than 1 in 100.

But why can't you just take your pictures with a standard digital camera and fix them later in Photoshop? "Well, sometimes you haven't captured everything you need to capture to make a good picture," the scientist says.

Levoy is the son, grandson and great-grandson of opticians, so he comes naturally by his interest in things visual. He imagines a future in which the camera is able to make adjustments that better mimic what the human eye is capable of.

But the Frankencamera won't necessarily turn everyone into Annie Leibovitz. "The part that we're not automating is the part that's nine inches behind the lens," Levoy says. "You still have to be a good designer of photographs."