Comprehensive analysis of Win8 task manager in all directions

[Computer Shop News]

Since Windows NT 4.0, the main task interface has not changed. What improvements have Microsoft made in Windows 8? As long as the Windows user does not encounter the program stuck, it is because of this, the task manager has gained a lot of popularity, almost everyone knows to press the Ctrl+Alt+Delete key combination to call up the task manager to end the card. Dead your app or process.

Since Windows NT 4.0 and later, XP and Windows7 have been updated in detail, but the main interface has not changed. And in Win8, the new version of the task manager has changed a lot, so what improvements have it made in Win8?

Task Manager (short mode)

So simple? Is this the Windows Task Manager? Well, yes, if you get up right today, the task manager in Win 8 must be like this. The new version of Task Manager opens the abbreviated information mode by default, because most people use task management when it is certain that a program card is dead. To end it, if there are other functions, please click the lower left corner “Details”.

This minimalist interface removes everything that is not related to the core application scenario. The user directly selects the program to terminate and clicks “ends the task”,done, even before this is more than "all?" & rdquo; The prompt box has been removed. Well, it is my best improvement in Win 8, no one.

Task Manager (Detailed Mode)

For advanced users, the task manager of the abbreviated mode is obviously not enough. Let's take a look at the task management of the detailed mode. .

New Grouping

Microsoft found that the most common operations used by users in the old version were "End Application" and "End Process", the most frequently clicked tab is also "Application" ” and “process” these two, and the frequency of use is basically the same, which means that there are some important details missing in the "Applications" page, causing users to go to the "process" to find. Therefore, in the new version of the task management, according to the "applications", "backstage process" and "Windows process" group display process, convenient for users to find.

New Display

The biggest difference between the new Task Manager and the old version is the use of color to represent the heat map of various values, your eyes will be Attract the most obvious resource issues. It labels different colors depending on the usage rate. The darker the color, the more system resources are consumed. If the occupancy of a resource exceeds the set threshold, the title of the column will be highlighted to draw your attention. The left picture below is the red disk alarm prompt that is encountered when the Photoshop is closed urgently. This visually visually reflects the occupancy ratio by visually recognizing the information. It is not only beautiful and comfortable, but also makes the user at a glance.

New Naming

A lot of the reason why many users don’t catch the process and service in the old Task Manager is that the naming is not "friendly", except for &ldquo ;QQ.exe”,“explorer.exe” It's quite good to say that other piles of "svchost.exe", "dwm.exe", "helid" and "hellip" are not known at all. In the new version, Microsoft finally began to "friendly" the background process, for example, renamed "splwow64.exe" to "Print driver host for applications". In addition, all services are grouped by process and the "friendly" name of each service is displayed.

New Features

1. Process Tags

You can expand applications with multiple tags in the new Task Manager for Win 8 (see The current selected tag, other tags are ignored, you can choose to end only the current tag under the program, rather than ending the entire program.

2. Support for Metro Applications

In addition to traditional desktop applications, the new Task Manager also supports Metro applications, as shown below.

(Although Metro applications are in memory, they are essentially in a hibernation state)

You can see that all Metro apps have zero CPU usage. This means that the Metro app in Win 8 is similar to the tombstone mechanism on Windows Phone. After leaving the Metro application page, the program will be terminated by the operating system, but the current state and data of the program will be saved to the tombstone. When you switch back to the app next time, you can use the tombstone to restore to the previous display state, as the user looks like it is always running. Of course, users with clean systems can choose to click "end the task" to completely kill the deadly "Robin".

In addition, under the “Application History” tab, you can see the summary of resource usage of the Metro application, such as CPU usage time, traffic consumption, and traffic consumed by tile update. Delete the usage data for these apps to start the calculation again. The consumption is also large, and there is also a clear color display, as shown below.

3. Online Search

In addition to the new naming, the new Task Manager adds online search capabilities to increase process identifiability and user friendliness. See the application, process name, and the name of the process you have not seen, right-click to select online search, it will automatically open the default browser search “ current process name.exe” to view more details and related information to help you determine a background Whether the process is useful or not, if you accidentally kill the wrong one, it will be blue screen.

4. Startup Management

In addition to the above changes to the display interface and new features, the new Task Manager is also built into the Startup Management feature. Under the "Start" tab, here you can set the displayed process to start by right-clicking.

Note: In fact, Microsoft has moved this function from “System Configuration” to this place, and you open the familiar “System Configuration” and found that it is no longer available. There, please also indicate the step-by-step task manager.

Conclusion: As with the file manager we introduced earlier, according to Microsoft's official statement, every design change of the new task manager is based on a large amount of user data. It can be seen that this data-based The advantages of user experience leading design. But what needs to be noted is that “real breakthrough innovation is rooted in a small number of cutting-edge users, and quantitative statistics cannot completely replace qualitative insights”.