I’m one of those geeks that has to always know what the various parts of my computer are doing. Is my CPU pegged? Am I using a lot of outbound network? What’s my temperature? etc.

I use an awesome little app called iPulse from IconFactory to see all of that graphically. It’s not free, but it only costs $13. I actually won an extra license of iPulse from them on Twitter during one of their Twitterific contests, so if you guys wanted to have it, or stage a giveaway or something, you’re welcome to it. I’ve been too lazy/swamped to blog one of my own. ;-)

I fell in love with iPulse long before I ever got a Mac. It was one of the cool Mac apps that I looked forward to running when the day came, and I even went so far as to design and use Samurize skins (a Windows performance meter app) that looked and worked like iPulse.

At any rate, you should a least check out the trial version, and give it a fair shake (it can take a little getting used to).

Sometimes systems will appear to not be doing anything while working with the disk and I find it useful to know that.

What is the use of knowing whether your HD is working or not? I do understand that the less it works, the more you get battery, but it will anyway eventually read/write, doesn’t it?