Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets

Although I’m a bit dismayed at their insistence on takingover the right side of my screen, some of WindowsVista’s gadgets for Windows Sidebar can be ratherhandy. Like mushrooms in the fall, gadgets are beginningto pop up everywhere, but there’s only so muchroom in the Sidebar. To help you populate your Sidebarwith only the best tools, here are my top 10 favorite Sidebar gadgets.The gadgets here (other than numbers 1 and 10) are availablefrom Microsoft Live Gallery at gallery.live.com. Just type the name ofthe gadget into the search box near the top of the page. Live Galleryalso provides hundreds of other gadgets, so if none of these interestyou, you can surely find something that does.

10. Weather—Yeah, it’s just the weather, but it’s kind of handy tohave a couple of Weather gadgets for remote locations whereyour friends are located. On the Sidebar, the gadget shows yourchosen city’s name, a weather graphic, and the temperature. TheWeather gadget comes with Vista and you can add it by using theSidebar’s Add Gadgets option.

9. Auction Sidebar Tool for eBay—If you’re addicted to eBay—and who isn’t?—this should be right up your alley. The gadgetlets you search for and monitor auctions and place bids. It’scertified by eBay, which should quell worries about a security breakdownhurting your seller or buyer rating.

8. Wikipedia Search—Admit it: You use Wikipedia. So do I. Wikipediais a regular stop for research on many topics. Althoughit’s a bit big for the sidebar, the Wikipedia Search gadget lets youquickly enter Wikipedia searches from your desktop. The Wikipediasearch results are displayed in your browser window. There are twogadgets with this name on Live Gallery. I recommend the one by“fredeq.”

7. messenger—If you use Windows Live Messenger for instantmessaging, you might want to check out the messenger gadget.It shows which of your contacts are online, any alerts, and yourWindows Live email status.

6. IP Webcam Gadget—I have a remote IP webcam in the office,and the IP Webcam Gadget gives me a handy window to thewebcam right on my laptop’s desktop when I’m travelling fromoffice to office. It took a bit of manual editing to put the addressof the webcam in the included .htm file, but after that it workedwell.

5. miniIP—The miniIP gadget gives you a quick display of yourexternal IP information. It reports your IP address and hostname,as well as location information, including your currentcity and county.

4. Vista Shutdown Control—Vista Shutdown Control gives youa convenient way to shut down your Vista system. The gadgetalso has buttons that let you restart the system and lock thedesktop. This gadget could be just what you’re looking for if youdon’t like Vista’s process for powering off your computer or if youoften need to lock it manually.

3. Speed Test—Speed Test is a system performance monitor.Unlike some of the other performance gadgets out there,Speed Test displays all of its system information in a graph.The gadget can monitor a wide variety of system statistics, includingCPU, RAM, and bandwidth usage; ping response time; Wi-Fi signalstrength; and battery charge.

2. ((System Monitor))—If you’re running one of today’s quadcoreprocessors, you’ve got to wonder exactly how much eachof those cores is really being used. The ((System Monitor))gadget gives you a quick look at your system’s IP address and thestatus of its CPU, RAM, and battery in bar graph form. The gadgetsupports monitoring up to four cores.

1. PowerShell Gadget—My favorite Sidebar utility is PowerShellGadget. This gadget is just as good as a “PowerShell Here”prompt—like the Command Here add-on for Windows XP.PowerShell Gadget lets you enter PowerShell commands rightinto the collapsed gadget. You can also expand it into a completePowerShell console window. You can find PowerShell Gadget atandrewpeters.net/powershell-gadget.