[acl]

I love htop too, but the great thing about scout_realtime is the couple minutes of context provided the charts.

Sometimes, nothing beats seeing a chart to quickly see what's going on.

[artursapek]

I've found MenuMeters really useful (only available on Mac though)

http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/index.html

It's always instantly clear when something like iTunes or a Chrome helper starts eating up 105% CPU, and provides quick access to force quitting it. :)

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/sEtkR9p.png

[flexd]

That is true, charts are nice.

I actually mostly use glances [1]. I forgot to mention glances in my comment.

[1] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Glances