iStat nano Editor's Review

iStat nano is a widget that provides you all kind of system information.

It has a lot of monitoring functionality. It was designed in order to cover a wide area of Mac computers.

Inside this application, you can get many monitoring modes. The default one is the 'All' mode. By using this mode, you can monitor your CPU, RAM, or Macintosh HD.

Other monitoring modes are CPU, RAM, Disks, Network, Processes, Uptime, Temps, Battery, and Fans. These monitoring modes work depending on your system configuration. They provide information about every item that is in that list.

The user interface is a little flexible, meaning that you can change the skin of the widget. You can find there enough skins to suit your needs.

In order to use the CPU monitoring functionality you need a required 3rd party driver, SpeedIt, which is a kernel extension. Otherwise the application won't display that kind of information.

Pluses: it's a free widget that allows you to monitor your system directly from the Dashboard.

Drawbacks / flaws:

In conclusion: if you don't need advanced information about every process, this program can successfully replace the Activity Monitor since it is a little faster and it uses less resources.

version reviewed: 1.7.1