WeatherBug Desktop Free Application System Resources Usage

In this article, we will examine the resources used by the WeatherBug Desktop free application. The data examined will include bandwidth, memory and CPU usage based on a single processor workstation.

Bandwidth-

First up, let’s look at the actual bandwidth usage as calculated by software known as Commview. To start off with, you will want to create the needed rules within Commview.

1. With Commview itself open, click on Rules, then select Protocols & Directions, enable IP and TCP. This will prevent the capturing of unwanted data from other protocols and applications.

Now you’ll want to head down to “Ports” and enable a port rule for Port 80.

Alright, at this point, you’ ll want to set up Commview to only capture, the appropriate application. So head down to “Process”, set it to capture only “WeatherBug.exe”.

Then we have one last setting that needs to be put into place. You will want to set the memory usage for the Commview application as follows. Set 5000, 210 and the slider set at 2000.

Great, now that everything is all set, we are ready to tackle the data itself!

After running Commview for 11 hours, 7 minutes I came up with the data results that I came up with.

Total time of data captured: 11 hours, 7 minutes

Total bytes captured: 91157

Average bytes per second: 2.28

Average bits per second: 18.22

Ports recorded: http/80

So basically, WeatherBug is using 2.28 bytes per second on average. This means that this application not only is not a hazard for internal networking hazards from the bandwidth perspective, it even throttles down far enough that it is safe for dial-up users.

System resources-

CPU usage: On a typical single Ghz box, you’ll not likely see it bounce past the 00 mark from the system monitor. So honestly, unless you are running with a truly dated machine, you should be fine with a 850Mhz box onward.

Memory usage: WeatherBug idles at roughly 700-880k and will spike for roughly 3-4 seconds during weather data updates that can bring it to a peak of 3,000k. Then we bounce back down to 700-880k.

If you are still needing more detailed information on the actual resource usage of the WeatherBug application for Windows? Take a look at Resource Usage page from Chris Sloop.

Coming up Fri - WeatherBug Alert resources and bandwidth resources examined.