This is one of those rare programs that I actually keep running in my task bar. I usually try out a program for a day or two, then get tired of it, or I just don’t like it hogging memory or CPU. Task Killer only uses 4180 KB on my computer, and it is very useful.

What it does is it pops up a menu when the icon is clicked. This menu has two sub-menus, one for processes, and the other for windows. When you click on one of the processes or windows in these sub-menus, it will pop up a message asking if you want to kill the process or window. If you click Yes, that process will be killed.

It’s a very nice way to be able to quickly monitor what background processes you have running. Having too many windows open or too many processes running can slow down your computer. I only usually have around 14 processs running at a time. This really helps to keep my computer running smoothly.

Task Killer also has some extra options. You can set hotkeys for the popup menu, windows, processes, and services. You can also exclude applications from the menu. There is a SmartKill option that I have yet to use, but evidently it will kill prcosses in a safer way.

I recommend giving this a try if you need to quickly manage running applications.