There are numerous ways to monitor a computer's performance, its usage levels, and Rainmeter offers one of the most good-looking ones, especially due to the fact that it supports third-party skins.
Rainmeter displays several panels on your desktop presenting a wide range of information about the host PC, such as the CPU, RAM and Swap usage, as well as the free space on each connected drive. This way, one can obtain a detailed overview of the computer within the same place (without needing to explore various menus and system windows).
Needless to say, when the monitored values are too high, users need to start closing some of their running applications and reduce the strain on their PC. Similarly, if they are running out of space on any partition, it is time to begin removing obsolete, unnecessary, duplicate or temp files either manually, or with a specialized software solution.
In addition to the aforementioned panels, Rainmeter can also place some extra ones onto the desktop, depending on your choice: a feed reader, the current time and date, Google searchbox and details about the network activity. Thus, everybody can keep track of their preferred news feed or monitor the upload and download rates without installing distinct apps.
Users get the possibility to select the panels they need and to modify the opacity and position for each of them. Once they obtain the layout that suits their desktop best, they can save it and restore it at a later time, thus getting the chance to keep experimenting with new designs without affecting the initial one.
Due to the flexibility of Rainmeter, third-party developers or enthusiast amateurs can easily use their creativity to produce artistic skins that can match the installed OS theme.
In other words, the functionality of Rainmeter can still be enjoyed regardless of the skin one settles for, and they can use the app for as long as they choose as it comes with a freeware license.
For an enhanced user experience, you can pair the app with external tools, such as Vista Rainbar or Rainmeter Skin Gallery.
The setup kit includes both an installer and portable version, while a separate portable utility can be found here.

What's New in This Release:
· [Fixed] Lua Scripting: Fixed a problem with a defined "default" value not working with SKIN:GetVariable() and meter:GetOption().