You can use the Windows 7 taskbar as a means of monitoring system performance. By installing Taskbar Meters, a third party program, you can monitor system performance right from the taskbar.
When you install Taskbar Meters, Windows 7 adds up to three icons to the taskbar that display dynamic performance information for your system’s computer memory, hard disk and CPU.
In a nutshell, when you download and extract Taskbar Meters, three executables are available. Each executable places a new icon on the Windows 7 taskbar which shows utilization for the applicable component.
You can download Taskbar Meters at http://taskbarmeters.codeplex.com/.
[Photo above by Pete Reed / CC BY-ND 2.0]
[awsbullet:steven colbert philosophy]
You can also use the widgets(?) Win 7 provides for the desktop. I believe it’s called the Sidebar but I’m not near my machine now.
There are hundreds of them, some for system monitoring.