Popular PC tools developer Wise Cleaner has released a public beta of its latest utility, Wise System Monitor.

The new addition is a desktop gadget which tracks and displays CPU usage, upload and download speeds, RAM consumption, CPU temperature and more.

Wise System Monitor’s interface is surprisingly plain. There are no fancy analogue dials, no flashy graphics at all, just a dark grey bar with a couple of tiny icons and the core figures you need.

This approach has its advantages, of course. RAM use is kept to a minimum (under 10MB during our tests), and there’s nothing in the program to distract you from your other PC activities.

Basic software, hardware and network performance details are just a click away

There is also more data available, should you need it. The gadget only displays a single figure for memory usage, like “RAM 38%”, but clicking this opens another panel listing the current most memory-hungry processes, and any of these can be closed with a click.

Similarly, clicking “CPU” displays processes by CPU use, and other panels list the programs uploading or downloading data, display graphs of internet activity over time, and highlight your CPU, hard drive and graphics card temperatures.

Right-click the gadget bar, select More Details, and another window appeals with a couple of extra tools: a horribly basic Task Manager-type tool and a marginally better system information panel. The latter might be useful occasionally (it has your local IP address, MAC addresses and so on) but right now both seem fairly pointless to us.

Wise System Monitor has nothing very new to offer, then, but its plain-but-practical interface is a plus, cramming plenty of features into a very lightweight frame. If you can use a simple system monitor then give it a try.