I’ll be the first to admit that this is a trivial comment/suggestion, but the Windows task manager is nice to keep in the system tray for watching the CPU (a little meter sits by the clock monitoring/reporting processor use). Keeping it in the system tray is also particularly useful in corporate environments where CTRL+ALT+DELETE brings up the glamorized “lock this computer/bring up task manager/log off/etc” menu (annoying). If you minimize the task manager to the system tray, clicking on its icon by the clock will bring the interface up without any extra bloat.
1. Ctrl+Alt+Delete > Options. Make sure “Hide when minimized” is checked
2. Minimize the box
It’s likewise nice adding the task manager to the system startup. This is easy enough to do manually (e.g. add to startup folder), but another way to get this going:
1. Create a new text file and then copy/paste the following:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"TaskMgr"="C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\taskmgr.exe"
2. Rename the file to anything with a .reg extension
3. Click it and allow the system registry to be modified
Stephen Sulzberger's Blog 