Excellent

I was looking for a comprehensive system monitor. The challenge with these things is that you want a compact summary to be visible at a glance, with more detailed information available on a click. System Monitor strikes this balance very nicely. Moreover, there is always the challenge of how to have information displayed permanently on the screen without this affecting the usage of other applications. Putting compact figures and charts in the status section of the menu bar achieves this and it works well, especially on systems with lots of screen real-estate.

There’s lots of configurability to get just the output you want, including instantaneous metrics, as well as small charts for a bit of history.

All in all, this was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Hopefully the author will continue to refine and enhance this over time too, as it has a lot of potential for even more monitoring, settable thresholds, use of colour for different levels, alarms/notifications etc.

Nicolas Name about System Monitor, v1.3