When Windows Vista came out one of the many features that was touted included the sidebar. This window sits on your desktop with a multitude of applications – better known as gadgets available to run in it. There are currently over 3,200 gadgets listed at the Windows Live Gallery for your sidebar as of this post.
They are broken down into several categories including:
- Fun and Games
- Mail and IM
- Multimedia
- Music, movies, TV
- News and feeds
- Safety and security
- Search tools
- Techy, geeky, cool
- Tools and utilities
- Miscellaneous
When I was running only one monitor on my home computer I messed around with the sidebar but it never stayed on the desktop for long – it just took up way too much real estate on a single monitor. For the last 5 months or so I have had a two monitor setup and the sidebar has found a permanent home on my setup (far right of my second monitor in fact).
What I would like to do is share what gadgets have earned a piece of the sidebar – there are 6 permanent ones that I keep on there all the time.
From the top to the bottom:
- Control System
- Weather (default one that comes with Windows Vista)
- Count Down (currently counting down days to release of the new Star Trek film on 08 May 2009 – 19 days!)
- Woot
- All CPU Meter
- Wired Network Meter
So what do you have on your sidebar? Feel free to post links to a picture in the comments.
