Whilst waiting for the Ultimate Extras to install, I checked the gadgets site to see if anything was released and was shocked to see a brand new and nice looking new site for the Sidebar gadgets!
With the full retail release of Microsoft Windows Vista just around the corner, one of the major things a new user of Windows Vista will immediately notice is the sidebar.
It’s a feature that appeared, dissapeared and the re-appeared thankfully in the later and final version of Windows Vista. I say thankfully as it’s possibly my favourite feature! If you have a widescreen monitor like mine, then you don’t feel like you have lost any screen real-estate and have a whole host of accessibility and information options available to you. One bit of advice would be to use the ‘Always on top’ option for the sidebar to keep it visible whilst other applications are open (doesn’t apply to games of course!).
Anyway here is my top 10 gadgets with links, quick description and images. Please feel free to let us know of better ones in the comments section below!
Great and handy gadget to combine with a minimised itunes. Load up your favourite playlist and navigate without the alt-tabbing! Displays Song, artist, track length, and artwork!
9. My Public IP
Displays your public IP address. Very useful if you are on DSL and have a provider that gives you a dynamic IP instead of a static one.
8. App Launcher
A godsend for those that used to like the MS Office toolbar for a little patch of shortcuts to common apps. I fill one iteration with my games shortcuts, then a second iteration with those little apps like calc, mspaint and Filezilla that I need constant access to all the time.
7. XBox Live Gamercard by Nazul
Absolutely useless but I like having it up there to remind of how great (or not) I am and that I should be playing games right now rather than working!
6. Net Monitor
Monitor the up and down load speed of any interface. I have lost the link to this one but will put it up as soon as I find it again!
5. Presto’s Hard Drive Monitor
Monitor the disk space of up to 4 hard disks (or mapped network shares)
4. Multi Meter
Monitors CPU usage (and versions available for dual/quad cores to monitor each core) and total RAM usage
Listen to any of a multitude of BBC radio stations straight from the sidebar! A godsend for this ex-pat stuck up in the north of Sweden when I want some home news and ENGLISH language 
Stations include Radio 1,2,3, and 4, World Service and 5 Live
2. Outlook Info
All in one gadget that monitors Outlook even when the program itself is closed. Shows Read/unread message counts, Calendar events (number configurable) and Tasks (again configurable). Having those little reminders at the side of the screen is great for those with a short attention span (like me).
1. Weather Gadget
Yes the one that is included as standard on Vista. Its perfect in that it has a huge selection of towns (taken from MSN Weather) and even a tiny town as obscure as the one we live has a station within 5 km. It not only shows current weather on the sidebar, but if you detach it and make it floating it expands to show a 3 day forecast. Crucial if you live in a place like this when you want to know how many feet of snow to expect and whether it will only be -5 tomorrw…. or -30!
Finally a screenshot of my desktop with many of these gadgets in action!
Trigger Finger is powered by WordPress