Without a doubt, the one freeware application that is at the top of my list, and my menubar, is… iStat Menus: http://www.islayer.com
It’s what we expect every Mac app to be, functional, unique and attractive. You just will not believe the amount of information about your Mac that iStat Menus can provide with just a glance at your menubar. iStat menus monitors your entire system with 8 separate and highly configurable menu extras. You’ll always know exactly what’s going on inside your Mac. You can see your CPU usage, and choose between 7 different modes to view, along with multi-core support. You’ll find memory usage and meters, disk usage and activity, networking activity including download and upload speeds on your Internet connection. There are temperature readings, fans speeds, Bluetooth status, and of course, my favorite, you can make the date and time look just the way you want them to look like. This app has it all and shows it all right in the menubar.

I like to know the current weather conditions without opening the dashboard, so I use, Meteorologist: http://heat-meteo.sourceforge.net .
It allows users total control over their weather viewing, including simultaneous interlaced weather reports from multiple weather locations, weather alerts, and much more. A glance at the menubar and I know the temperature and conditions. Simple, elegant and functional, what more can a user ask from their software?

The next application you’ll always find on my menubar is, SoundSource: http://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies. What can I say, I’ve talked about SoundSource for a long time. It’s the ultimate menubar utility. SoundSource is a tiny tool for OS X enabling you to switch your audio input and output sources with a single click, and even adjust their volume settings. New in 2.0 - Volume sliders for all devices, right in SoundSource! (Mac OS X 10.5 only). If you use more then one recording device or output thru more then just your Mac built in speakers, you need Sound source. Of course, I’d be remiss in not telling you that RogueAmoeba gives us SoundSource free of charge, and that RogueAmoeba is one of the Mac community’s greatest assets. Make certain you visit their Web site and support all their efforts by purchasing some of the great shareware they offer us.

Here’s a new application I discovered that works with my Apple Mail program. It’s called, Mail Unread Menu: http://www.loganrockmore.com/MailUnreadMenu Mail Unread Menu is a simple menu bar application which can provide you with a quick and easy way to see how many unread email messages are in Apple’s Mail. Unlike other menu bar notification applications, Mail Unread Menu is actually a plugin for Mail, which means that the count is instantaneously updated whenever you receive new email or change the status of a message. You can use it’s preferences to see the inbox or all your email folders. You can bring the mail application to the front, check for new mail or compose a new email with just a click of the menubar icon.