Revealed: Windows 8 task manager

By Richi Jennings (@richi ) - October 17, 2011.
 
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has unveiled its re-design for the task manager in Windows 8. Simplicity, with hidden power seem to be the watchwords. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers display grudging admiration.
 
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment.
 
 
Ian Paul reports:

Microsoft says three goals guided development of the new task manager...it wants to create a task manager that is optimized for common tasks...using a modern and functional interface, but without cutting out the favorite functions of power users..
...
[N]no tabs, no menu bar, no statistics -- just apps. ... [Y]ou won't get a double prompt asking you if you're certain you want to kill a process. ... Power users looking for a more information...can still get it by clicking the "More details" button. ... [P]rocesses are grouped by type. ... A heat map is also supplied to help you identify which applications are sucking up your system.   

  
Lawrence Latif adds:

Surprisingly...task manager is a very popular application, but unsurprisingly, the most common use for it is to kill processes.
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Microsoft's biggest visual change to task manager is a heat map. ... Although it might sound like something of a gimmick...it is a relatively easy way of identifying processes that are hogging resources.
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Ultimately however, having users fiddle around with a task manager is exactly what competing...operating systems...try to avoid.   

Microsoft's Ryan Haveson fills in the blanks:

Because Task Manager is so widely used, we knew that any changes we made would be noticed. ... At the beginning...we knew we wanted to...[f]ill some of the functionality gaps that drove...our most technical customers to use other tools such as Resource Monitor and Process Explorer.
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Many power users [use] other tools...simply because...Task Manager did not show per-process network and disk attribution. ... [A] spinning disk or...network bandwidth are the root cause of many perceptible PC performance issues.   

 
And Adrian Kingsley-Hughes calls it "awesome":

[S]ometimes Microsoft gets something dead on accurate, and when that happens it deserves a shout out.
...
This is brilliant. Utterly brilliant...because this one window gives users easy, one-click access to the most commonly used action...ending a task. ... As someone who has been using Windows 8 quite a lot...these are very nice changes indeed.   

 
But Ray Walters has mixed feelings:

[C]redit does need to be given to the development team for...[their] quality research on how people are using task manager.
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[But Microsoft is] actually way, way off base. ... there should be one simple goal for the team: Create a way for the user to end...a program with one key combo.   

[Err, Ray, isn't that exactly what it does?]

  
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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. He's the creator and main author of Computerworld's IT Blogwatch -- for which he has won American Society of Business Publication Editors and Jesse H. Neal awards on behalf of Computerworld. He also writes The Long View for IDG Enterprise. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com. You can also read Richi's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.