From 95 to Win8 Review the leaping progress of task management!

In a sense, the rise of Windows is largely determined by the introduction of multitasking mechanisms. It is precisely because of this technology that the original unreachable side of the Internet and listening to songs and other applications for the first time has a technical basis. Of course, like many new technologies, multitasking is also a double-edged sword. While providing us with a better experience, it also increases the requirements for system, CPU, and memory. So the DOS era is still very large. Suddenly became insufficient, and this also triggered another topic —— task management.

1. Task management without manager

Age: 1995~2000

The task manager for this period cannot be called task manager because Its function is really too weak. After pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete, there is only one bare panel, and the function is limited to the process shutdown. No CPU usage, no memory consumption, everything depends on the user's own judgment. However, this is not the biggest problem. Since Win9X is all displayed in English process name (there is no description of the process similar to Win2000), it has invisibly increased the user's operation threshold, so people at that time have sought third-party software to replace this weak one. “Process Manager”.
Fig. 1 The so-called "process control panel" in Win9X 

2. The initial year of task management! Windows 2000

Age: 2000

Time entered 2000, Win2000 began to become the mainstream operating system, so it also ported WinNT's task manager based on the NT kernel. You can see that this manager is similar in appearance to the task manager we are familiar with, but there are still some gaps in functionality. For example, we can close a software arbitrarily through the "application", filter the abnormal process through the "process" menu, stop the entire process tree through the right-click menu, and so on, as well as the seemingly intuitive CPU and memory chart display. In addition, another major change in this period is to allow users to customize the display of process columns through menus to meet the needs of different users.
Fig. 2 Win2000 Task Manager (click to view larger image)

In addition to the task manager, Win2000 also provides a series of auxiliary monitoring tools, such as "Control Panel - Management Tools" under "“ "Performance monitoring" is a good example. Unlike task managers, the highlight of performance monitoring is the ability to customize monitoring metrics and even monitor other computers on the network. Of course, the classification of indicators is also very detailed, as large as the processor hardware, memory, hard disk and other large host hardware, as small as a process link parameters, etc., can be graphically represented.
Fig. 3 Performance Monitor

3. Strengthen network monitoring! Windows XP

Age: 2001

Compared with Win2000's task manager, the biggest highlight of the XP version is the inclusion of network traffic graphs. Of course, this picture is nothing special in function. It just provides a visual display platform, which can only provide the most basic network traffic graphs. Even the specific traffic data of a certain process cannot be provided. It can be said that there is no bright spot. .
Figure 4 Networking Traffic Chart

4. Management Improvement! Windows Vista

Year: 2007

As WinXP is increasingly accepted by the majority of users, Microsoft began to brew its next-generation operating system. However, Task Manager did not improve much in this upgrade, but added two new panels, “Services” and “Users”. From the function point of view, the addition of these two functions does not have much to watch. For example, the service also needs to enter the “Services” module to modify, “User” also shows only the current status, even the other accounts are open. None of the processes can be displayed. It can be said that from this period, Windows Task Manager is slowly losing its original charm!
Figure 5 Newly added "Services" and "Users"

The user's needs spawned a new module to join, under the "Performance" tab of the Vista Task Manager. A new "resource monitor" has been added. Compared with the traditional task manager, this module provides a richer performance monitoring indicator. For example, we can quickly find out what program is causing the hard disk light to be bright, and can also find out the abnormal process of crazy upload. In the XP version, the problem of single-process traffic cannot be displayed, and it can be easily done under this module. Of course, it may seem a bit cumbersome to open another program, and this may be the biggest motivation for Win8 task manager development.
Fig. 6 Resource Monitor

5. Change the details! Windows7

Age: 2009

As a modified version of "Vista", Windows 7 has not been used in Task Manager, all you can see is "& performance" A new free physical memory has been added under the tag. But the changes in the resource monitor are obvious. In addition to changing the performance chart to the right to make more room for the data, more indicators are added under each monitoring item (CPU, memory, disk, network). For example, under the network tab, it is subdivided into “network activity process”, “network activity”, “TCP connection”, “listening port”, and several categories. The IP and port number of the process, which helps locate the abnormal process. But at the same time, Windows task management has been introduced to an awkward situation —— task manager is too simple, and resource monitor is too complicated!
Figure 7 New Resource Monitor
6. Full upgrade! Windows8

Year: 2012

As a new generation of Microsoft operating systems, Task Manager has ushered in the biggest upgrade in 12 years. In this version, you will find a lot of content that we have been waiting for for a long time. For example, the process panel finally provides disk and network traffic display, which program causes disk madness, and which program causes crazy upload, you can see it here. At the same time, the new version also strengthens the monitoring and warning. When a process indicator exceeds a certain limit, the task manager will automatically mark it in red. This way you don't have to compare the data. Open the panel to get a clear idea of ​​whether the entire system is working properly.
Fig. 8 Win8 task manager (click to view larger image)

In the new version of Win8 task manager, a lot of resource monitor functions (resource monitors are still retained), which runs through each module The Disk and Network indicators are the best examples. At the same time, the performance panel also added two parameters of hard disk and network, and added some new modules such as “Startup Item Management” and “APP History”. The addition of various new changes has greatly improved the practical work ability of Win8 Task Manager.

Heat map management is another of the most important features of Win8 Task Manager. In addition to being able to identify abnormal processes in the process panel, it can also be used in performance displays. Previously, Microsoft provided a screenshot of the working status of multi-core CPU. When the CPU core exceeds a certain amount, the color + text display mode of Win8 is obviously more intuitive than that of Win7, and this is all the heat map display credit!
Figure 9 New and old task manager shows 160 logical core comparisons

Written at the end

It can be seen that throughout the development of Windows, the task manager has been continuously improving. . But compared to other modules, I have to say that its pace is not very big. Of course, with the latest version of the Win8 system coming out, this problem seems to be a good solution. But I have to admit that the task manager's intelligence still has a lot of room for improvement (compared to some third-party optimization software), and this can only be further improved by Microsoft!