REVEALED: Dave plummer | Rare Historical Photos

I tried the sequel to Task Manager and it has too many special effects

If Task Manager is so good, why isn't there a Task Manager 2?

PC Gamer · Aug 28

The team behind Windows NT sent 'black cardboard coffins' and fake dog poop to their rivals back in the 90s, because nerds

Halcyon days.

PC Gamer · Jul 16

"Not every app needs to bundle the universe": This tiny notepad app shows why Windows has become so bloated

Former Windows engineer Dave Plummer built a working notepad app that's just 2,686 bytes. The app illustrates how bloated modern software has become.

Windows Central · Jul 7

'A performance tool that requires a graduate seminar before breakfast has already lost the room': Why Windows Task Manager looks like it's getting CPU usage wrong

There's more to CPU utilisation calculations than at first meet the eye.

PC Gamer · Apr 21

Original Task Manager creator explains why it lies to you about CPU usage — former Microsoft engineer shows unique solution to a seemingly simple, but actually complicated, task

Dave Plummer pops the hood on Task Manager and explains how it gets your PC's CPU usage (and why it feels off sometimes).

Tom’s Hardware · Apr 20

Microsoft veteran says the Task Manager was under 80 KB because "small was fast and fast mattered" — but wishes "we had carried more of that taste, not the suffering"

Microsoft veteran Dave Plummer shares why the original Task Manager was lean, fast, and designed to stay calm when Windows crashed.

Windows Central · Apr 15

Veteran Windows dev shows off AI running on 47-year-old PDP11 with 6 MHz CPU and 64KB of RAM — 'gloriously absurd' project runs transformer model written in PDP-11 assembly language

Ancient 6 MHz ‘PDP11 can train a neural network’ says veteran dev.

Tom’s Hardware · Apr 14

Task Manager's creator says it used to be 50 times smaller because 'in that time and place, small was fast and fast mattered'

"It has to look calm even when the rest of the system is not."

PC Gamer · Apr 13

Veteran Microsoft engineer says original Task Manager was only 80KB so it could run smoothly on 90s computers — original utility used a smart technique to determine whether it was the only running instance

Dave Plummer used several clever techniques to ensure that Windows Task Manager will always run while cutting the performance hit on your hardware when when it's opened.

Tom’s Hardware · Apr 12

A retired Microsoft engineer is training an AI to master Robotron: 2084, an incredibly difficult arcade game about a robot uprising

There is something deliciously karmic about this one.

PC Gamer · Mar 16