Mac Tip: Activity Monitor

Ever wonder why your Mac has grown hot? Or starts acting sluggish or seems to be thinking really hard? Enter Activity Monitor.

This is an Apple app that ships with OS X and helps you examine the processor load, network activity, disk and memory usage on your Mac.

1. Go to Applications > Utilities to find it (or just type "Activity" and then spacebar in Spotlight).
2. Choose View > Dock Icon > Show CPU History in the application menu (or right-click on the Dock Icon itself).
3. Close the main window if you want (just click on Dock Icon to show it again).
4. You can even go one step further and make it a Login Item.

Voila! A handy, instant peek into the brain of your machine. It's free, it's always on, but takes less memory than iPulse, which is still cool.