With so many features, it's easy to get confused on whether you need these features or not. For that reason, let's discuss in a nutshell what Process Commander does. If you own a copy of Process Commander, here are just a few of the things you'll be able to do. This is by no means a complete list.
1) If your system has ever "hung", instead of having to reboot you can hit the Ctrl+Alt+Del keyboard combination and Process Commander full screen interjects. Because the full screen version is not subject to OS/2's message queue, it isn't usually affected by system hangs. From here, Process Commander can usually identify the cause of the system hang and offer suggestions for recovering (such as terminating a bad application). This feature is also useful for those who don't want their users or themselves to accidentally reboot their systems with the Ctrl+Alt+Del combination.
2) It provides new ways to shut down. OS/2 (especially OS/2 Warp 4) can often take some time to shutdown. Process Commander provides two new types of Shutdowns: Enhanced and Quick. Enhanced Shutdown acts the same as OS/2's standard shutdown except it also offers the option to reboot when it is done. Quick Shutdown writes the contents of the cache to disk and shuts down which is much faster than the Enhanced shutdown. It won't save the positions of your icons but this is normally not something you want to do. It too gives the option of rebooting after shutdown. For many users, the auto-reboot feature is a real "must have". On network systems or on power user systems, it can take a long time to shut down. Now, users can have it shutdown and reboot while they get up and do something else in the office.
3) You can access a wide range of command line utilities such as a true "Kill -9" utility. This is essential for those who write REXX scripts or like to work from the command line.
4) The graphical version of Process Commander allows users to optimize their systems by looking at what the system loads on boot up. In most cases, OS/2 loads a lot more things than is needed. It will also allow users to modify the priority of threads, look at shared memory, , semaphores, etc. If you are an OS/2 developer, corporate desktop user, or IS manager, this feature is very attractive.
5) Any user of Unix knows that if a Unix system "crashes", they can usually recover by TELNETing to it from a remote machine and terminating the app that is causing the Unix machine to hang. Until now, OS/2 users did not have this ability. Process Commander allows users to TELNET onto a remote machine (from anywhere) and manage processes remotely (including termination). Security measures are also built in for those who want to keep others from doing this.
6) Process Commander also enhances the keyboard driver in many ways. For example, it allows OS/2 users to use those "Windows95 enhanced" keys on many new keyboards. Users can also redefine many other keys on the keyboard as well.
7) As a side note, Process Commander also "fixes" the long complained about Num-Lock startup value. OS/2 users since 1.3 have asked for the Num-lock state to be settable since many corporations use OS/2 as a data entry front end. With Process Commander, the Num-Lock setting can be set on boot up which can reduce training costs (and is convenient).
8) Can automatically terminate processes that hang system if you tell it to.
9) Can set the priority of threads, processes from the command line, GUI, or full screen Process Commander
10) Process Commander Full Screen comes with a special command line mode that lets users navigate their system even when it's terribly hung.
