By Windows 8 is now one of most expected products of 2012. We have already let you know about some of the features the OS will come up with but today we’ll focus on its Task Manager. The improvements of this tool as well as the goal tasks of the new Task Manager have been presented by Microsoft’s Steven Sinofksy and the program manager, Ryan Haveson.
So, here’s what Steve Sinofsky says about the new Task Manager that Windows 8 will come up with:
“For Windows 8, we took a new look at the tool and thought through some new scenarios and a new way of tuning the tool for “both ends of the spectrum” in terms of end-users and those that need very fine-grained control over what is going on with their PC.”
Task Manager is one the most used apps making its appearance from the early versions of the Windows operating system. At first, the tool’s function was that of closing and switching between programs. In time it became a more complex utility, every release of a new version of Windows bringing something new to Task Manager. Here’s how Task Manager gradually evolved:
In the next image one can notice the New Task button has been added.
Windows XP comes with Networking and Users Tabs as you can see in the image below.
Building a new Task Manager surely means hard work. That’s because the new features added have to improve the functionality of this tool. So, its developers wanted to bring a tool with a modern design, a tool that would offer all the services users need and thus avoid the need of using other services like Processor Explorer and Resource Monitor.
Steve Sinofsky has also said that the researchers, designers and engineers that have been working on the new tool tried to understand how Task Manager has been used in order to find out what needs to be added to it. So, with Windows 7, Task Manager became an utility used to close apps, to find out data about realted to processes as well as to monitor the network adaptor. This was quite something for Task Manager.
Research in this matter has concluded that people were using Task Manager for viewing applications and processes. The conclusion also pointed that the Processes Tab has been used more often and that’s because users either wanted to identify all those processes that used most resources or to find other things that did not appear in the Applications list.
The research has also led to the conclusion that Task Manager was mostly used to end or “kill” a process or an application as one can notice in the image below.
Taking all these aspects and conclusions into account, the developers of the new Task Manager have decided to focus on three goals in what the new Task Manager is concerned. The first one would be to optimize the tool for the most used actions, that is to focus on the Applications tab and on the Processes tab. The second goal regarding the development of the new Task Manager is to give it a thoughtful as well as modern design that would make it even more functional. Besides the two, there’s another goal regarding the new Task Manager and that is to keep functionality.
So, developers thought of a way to add the new features without overwhelming the user. Therefore, they decided to add a “More/Fewer Details” button.
By doing so, Fewer Details view around the task of finding and closing an app has been optimized. On the other hand, more details have been added to the other view (More Details). Thus, the functionality hasn’t been removed and the tool has thus been improved and enhanced.
So, let’s have a look at the scenarios of Windows 8 Task Manager.
As Steve Sinofsky has said, many things could have been added to the new Task Manager but the developers wanted the tool to address to the mainstream users and thus not overwhelm the people using Task Manager. Therefore, the first time users launch Task Manager in Windows 8, they will see a very clean view of their running apps. Anything that did not support the core scenario has been removed. Another good thing about the new Task Manager regards the fact that the default view does great at killing misbehaving apps.
With all those things that didn’t focus on the main scenario of killing apps having been removed, the design of the default view is much more focused and efficient. Thus, the tabs as well as the menu bar have been removed since they can only distract the user from the core task.
Since many users don’t understand all those technical concepts and resource usage stats, developers have decided to remove them as well. There will be no double prompts with the new Task Manager. Therefore, if you want to end a task, you won’t be asked whether you are sure you want to do that anymore. The app will just be killed and that’s all.
You can see the difference in the images below. The first one shows the Windows 7 Task Manager and the second one shows the new Task Manager Windows 8 will come up with.
The second scenario is related to diagnosing performance issues. If the Fewer Details view is addressed to mainstream users, the More Details view is definitely intended for power users. Therefore, mainstream users should get all they need by using the Fewer Details view. So, let’s have a look at what can be seen in the More Details view:
One great difference Processes Tab feature is the new heat map. With this feature anomalies will be monitored across memory, disk, CPU utilization and network.
Another feature regarding the new Task Manager is related to the Network and Disk counters. In the past, per-process network and the disk attribution weren’t shown. So, developers thought that these should be shown in the new Task Manager. Therefore, the tool will now show these resources next to details related to CPU and memory.
The Task Manager that Windows 8 will come up with will highlight the resource usage so that you can find more easily the cause of your computer performance issues. Resource contention is one of the main things that can lead to serious PC performance issues. So, whenever the rate of a source has exceeded a certain number, you will see a light on the column header. This will be like an indicator that you can use to know where to start looking in case you experience PC performance issues. You can see how this works in the image below:
The current Task Manager isn’t very helpful when it comes to know which processes belong to what. Well, with the new Task Manager things will get much less complicated. And that’s because, the improved tool will group all the processes by type.
Developers have created a simpler and much useful view for common usage with all the features and improvements mentioned above. The top-level windows are now grouped under their patent process. With Windows 8 Task Manager, you will be able to focus more on the process resource usage and on the killable processes.
The tool will also come up with easy to understand names for processes. So, if you now see something like “fussvc.exe”, you will probably understand nothing. With the new Task Manager, you will no longer see that but Fast User Switching Utility Service. This might help you understand what you’re seeing. Still, many users may not know what this is about. By right-clicking, you will get to a search context menu that will take you directly to your search engine and thus help you get more details and information related to a certain process.
All in all, the new Task Manager has been added quite a lot of new things. Windows 8 will bring a Task Manager that is no longer a simple tool!
