They're everywhere in your organization: Windows desktops and Windows servers. Optimizing their performance is a key task for IT administrators, whether they support desktops, e-mail servers, SQL servers, databases, or file shares. And understanding the performance effects on these Windows systems of new software loads, hardware configurations or operating system updates is yet another job in and of itself.

Randall C. Kennedy, chief software architect for Devil Mountain Software, has spent nearly two decades profiling Windows and PC performance for clients such as Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. In that time, he's developed not only a keen understanding of what goes on under the various Windows hoods but also a sophisticated set of monitoring tools for Windows (from version 2000 through Vista, both desktop and server editions).

[ Monitor your own Windows performance with the new Windows Sentinel toolsfrom InfoWorld. Share your questions and experiences in the companion blog. ]

Kennedy is also InfoWorld's Enterprise Desktop blogger and director of the Exo Performance Network, a community of Windows users and administrators trying to build a global profile of Windows systems as used in the real world. Already, 3,000 people participate.

InfoWorld readers can now join in, plus get a set of handy monitoring widgets called Windows Sentinels that you can run from the Web, on a mobile device, or in a desktop widget. Working with Kennedy, InfoWorld has created a simple front end for his monitoring tools that lets you track overall system performance, application/process performance, and network performance -- as well as set thresholds for when you want alerts e-mailed to you. After registering for the tools, you download agent software that you can install on up to three systems. After an hour, the performance results are visible in the Windows Sentinel monitors accessible from InfoWorld.com/winsentinel, via a mobile widget and via desktop widgets. The data is updated once a minute and the widgets present a week's worth of information for you to analyze using the monitors' various options.

The information sampled by the downloaded agent is sent to Kennedy's Exo Performance Network, which InfoWorld has judged to be secure and reliable. Only you or someone you provide login credentials to will see your performance data. The performance data stored on the Exo Performance Network will be shared in aggregate -- and never identified as linked to your individual account -- to help the broader Windows community understand and discuss real-world Windows performance trends. You can learn more about these real-world trends in the Windows Sentinel blog that Kennedy moderates at InfoWorld.

You can learn more about the free widgets at the beta Windows Sentinel page. (Give us your feedback: E-mail Executive Editor Galen Gruman, and please put "Windows Sentinel" in the subject line.) And whether or not you participate in this community directly by using these widgets, you can learn what the community discovers about Windows performance at the Windows Sentinel blog that Kennedy writes for us. (Not to worry, he's still doing his Enterprise Desktop blog as well.)

And to learn how we went about creating our mobile and desktop widgets, read Gruman's firsthand account of our exploration of Adobe AIR for desktop-based Internet-abled apps and the issues that came up when we tried to bring real Web capabilities to the mobile world (and why iPhone and Symbian 12 OS users come out ahead, why Palm OS Blazer and Opera Mini browser users come out mostly OK, and why Windows Mobile and BlackBerry users will be disappointed).