Monday's Mac Gadget
by John F. Braun

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Want to Know About Your Mac's Sensors? Check Out ThermographX!

June 21, 2004

ThermographX 1.2.4 ($7 Shareware)
Jeremy Kezer

Back in the early days of personal computing, processors would just sit in their sockets, happily computing without having to worry about overheating. In the good old days of the Apple ][, the trusty 6502 processor was operating at a blazing 1 MHz. Compare this to today's processors, which operate in the GHz range, and use processes that attempt to squeeze even more transistors onto a chip. This had led to designs that require clever design requiring thermally conductive paste, metal heat sinks, fans, and in some cases, liquid cooling. If only there was a way to monitor the temperature sensors in your Mac...

ThermographX is an update of an old favorite that will report the temperature of all the sensors in your Mac, providing that your machine offers some support for reading temperature. This could be a sensor in the processor itself, or a sensor near an area that may require cooling, or both. Simple cooling design, such as those for early machines and portables, may include one or two sensors, and a single fan. This is the case with a machine such as the PowerBook G4 12". It reports two temperature sensors, a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) Topside sensor, and a CPU (in this case, the G4) Bottomside sensor.

Monday's Mac Gadget is here to help you with those cool things that we all just have to have on our Macs. Shareware, Freeware, Postcardware, Emailware, and even commercial apps, Monday's Mac Gadget is here to help you find and use the best of these programs.

John is a software engineer who works in the corporate R&D group of a Fortune 500 company, focusing on all aspects of communications technology. He has several degrees that claim he knows what he's doing when it comes to computers. After watching co-workers reinstall Windows, search for device drivers, and experience other horrors during the day, he's glad that he comes home to a Mac (compatible) computer. Have any comments, suggestions, or favorite Gadgets? Drop John a line at

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