Process Lasso is a very popular PC program, which has been available for over half a decade. It’s not about making a slow PC faster. Instead, Process Lasso is designed to make your computer perform at its optimum level, for maximum responsiveness. So, yes it is intended for high-end CPUs as well as low end CPUs. Process Lasso Pro uses a special feature called ProBalance. This built-in algorithm, is what prevents lags when you use your computer.
How does this work? Basically, what it does is that, it monitors the processes aka the programs which are running, for high CPU usage, and prevents excessive usage ala Normal Priority, for a single thread, aka a single CPU core switching between multiple threads or processes . This helps preventing one program, from hogging up the resources, which may cause lags, and ensures that other programs have sufficient processing power left.
That sounds confusing, I don’t want to use complex features. Don’t be confused by the complex UI of Process Lasso. You don’t have to do a thing. Install Process Lasso and let it work silently in the background. It can be used as an “install and forget” kind of software. If you fall into this category, i.e., you just want the power of ProBalance, in a minimal application, you may want to check the newly released CPUBalance program instead. It uses the same core engine as its bigger brother, but it can function without Process Lasso, or an also run as a companion program for Process Lasso with a few extra features (Fair warning, CPUBalance is still in beta).
Here’s an example of how I use Process Lasso for my everyday use.
I have often noticed that my browser, (Mozilla Firefox), freeze up for a few seconds with a spinning circle, before it gets back to a working state. This was the case without Process Lasso running. With Process Lasso running quietly in the background, I experienced a much better peformance, amost zero-lags (except when loading very heavy we pages). This helps me multi-task with a great many applications in the background. Currently, while writing this review I have a lot of Firefox Tabs, the Telegram desktop app, Open Live Writer, PotPlayer playing a video in the background, a screenshot application, NotePad++, and Steam running, and still the laptop I’m working on, does not lag in the slightest.
That’s because of the application sitting on the system tray, Process Lasso. The best part is that it does mot interfere with your antivirus program. I tested it with Kaspersky Internet Security 2017, and now am testing it with AVG AntiVirus 2017 Beta.
If you are an advanced user you will be happy to know that Process Lasso can be used to change the priority of processes, the CPU affinity (Core selection), choose from several available Power Profiles and more. The IdleSaver is particularly helpful especially for laptop users, ebcause it makes the CPU run at max performance when you are using the computer, but when it is idle, it puts the system to a power saving state called Balanced Mode, essentially a Power Saving plan. The settings menu in Process Lasso lets you customize the application, to perform automated tasks based on certain triggers. For example, you can set it to switch to a power plan, when a selected process is opened, make the program keep your PC awake for a set time, let processes auto-restart if they crash, set priorities and CPU affinites, etc.
You can use Process Lasso to ensure that your system only uses the physical cores of your processor, and avoid logical ones (Hyper-Threading), by using the CPU affinity setting for it. In case you don’t know how it works, a CPU uses a combination of physical cores and logical cores for HyperThreading. A dual-core i3 processor, for example, will use a combination of 2 physical cores and 2 logical cores to work on threads. When a process is running in Windows, it can use multiple threads, hence the possibility to run mulitple applications at once, aka multi-tasking. You don’t have to avoid Hyper-Threading completely, instead use Process Lasso to set the application’s CPU affinity to use only the physical cores.
The Watchdog is one particularly helpful setting available in Process Lasso, as it can be configured to do a lot of tasks with a selected process. Not only can you set the CPU priority or affinity,, you can also use it to terminate the process or even monitor its
activities using a log. This reminds me of a funny story, when one of my friends used this feature to check how often the GWX10 (Get Windows 10) app ran on his Windows 7 PC, and prevented the forced upgrade to Windows 10, by terminating the program automatically. So, you see, Process Lasso can be useful in many ways.
You don’t have to take our word for it. There are many syntheric test programs available, which lets you test Process Lasso’s performance first hand.
Process Lasso Pro has quite a few additional features compared to the free version. This includes Application Power Profiles, Process Watchdog, CPU Throttling, Auto Gaming Node, to name a few.