Monitors

Monitor Applets are designed to be used to keep track of your system and its functions. You can monitor the resources of your machine, which allows you to keep close tabs on how things are working.

Battery Monitor

The Battery Monitor is a simple applet that allows you to see how much time you have remaining on your laptop monitor.

The Battery Charge Monitor indicates what percentage or your laptop's battery charge remains and how long the laptop can run with this charge. It also indicates if the laptop is currently plugged in. If you left click on the applet, the display will change to a graph plotting the remaining charge on the vertical axis and the time on the horizontal. So if your laptop has been charging, the graph should be rising and if it has been running on batteries, the graph should be falling.

Right clicking on the applet will bring up a pop-up menu. If you click on the Properties menu item you can edit properties such as which colors to use in the display, when to notify you of a low battery, and the general look of the applet.

CPU/MEM Usage Monitor

The CPU/MEM Usage Monitor is an applet that will show you the current usage of CPU, Memory, and Swap Space. The applet consists of three bars that are shaded with colors to represent the usage. If you are running the applet on a horizontal panel the top bar is CPU, the middle bar is Memory, and the bottom bar is Swap Space. If you are running the applet on a vertical panel the CPU is the left bar, Memory is the middle bar, and Swap Space is the right bar.

Figure 19-1. The CPU/MEM Applet

CPU - The CPU bar will break down current CPU usage by means of three colors. The yellow shows the current hit by the current user. Grey shows the current hit by non-user specified system activity. Black show idle use.
MEMORY - The Memory bar shows the current physical memory usage with one of four colors. The yellow show the current shared memory usage. The grey-yellow show other memory usage. The grey shows the buffers being used. The Green show free physical memory available on your system.
SWAP SPACE - The Swap Space bar shows how much swap space is being used with a yellow bar. Any free swap space will be shown with a green bar.

CPULoad Applet

The CPULoad Applet is a simple graph that shows you the current CPU Usage using three colors:

Figure 19-2. The CPULoad Applet

The yellow shows the current hit by the current user. Grey shows the current hit by non-user specified system activity. Black show idle use.

MEMLoad Applet

The MEMLoad is a simple graph that shows you the current Memory usage using four colors:

Figure 19-3. The MEMLoad Applet

The yellow show the current shared memory usage. The grey-yellow show other memory usage. The grey shows the buffers being used. The Green shows free physical memory available on your system.

SWAPLoad Applet

The SWAPLoad is a simple graph that shows you the current Swap Space usage using two colors:

Figure 19-4. The SWAPLoad Applet

The yellow bar shows how much swap space is currently being used. Any free swap space will be shown with a green bar.