Written on August 20, 2009 – 12:53 pm | by CoolGadgetConcept |
A new feature which became available since Vista has been released and can be also found in Windows 7, is Microsoft's Desktop Gadgets application. Gadgets became very popular, and they are very useful in their form of small application which brings information on your desktop. They are practically mini-applications which run on the desktop while you can do anything else, and they bring you the specific information you need. Microsoft didn't become more popular with this additional feature, and he isn't the first to use these mini applications, but they are a good improvement on the system, and they help a lot the users. Now it's easier to create gadgets, and there are a lot of people developing their own gadgets, and then offer them to the public.

If you want to add Microsoft Desktop Gadgets on your desktop, the method is quite easy. You should right click on the desktop, and then choose the Gadgets option in the appearing menu. This action will bring you a dialog windows, which will show you the gadgets installed on your system. In the following image you can see a print screen of this dialog, and you can observe that the interface is user friendly, and quite well organized. You can add some of the gadgets in the sidebar, or you can get more gadgets from Microsoft website.

A very simple gadget is the Calendar, and I chose it to explain you some details about Windows 7 gadgets.

Each gadget has the possibility of customization, if this was intended by the designer, and if he made it available. Here you can see the standard buttons which can be used in customizing the gadget. First button is for closing the gadget, so if you want it to disappear from the Sidebar, you just click it and the gadget is gone, you can make it smaller (there are gadgets which have expanded form, larger than the sidebar's limits, and you can press on the second button to make it smaller, so it can fit inside the Microsoft Sidebar. The third button is for positioning the gadget inside the sidebar or on the desktop. All gadgets can be used inside the sidebar, or anchored on the desktop. The last button is for settings, and the dialog which shows up varies from gadget to gadget.

Here are the default gadgets which come with Windows 7, and short descriptions for each of them. More than these, you can download any time new gadgets, which fit your needs and preferences.

The Digital Dutch Clock is the default clock which comes with the installation of Windows Vista or 7, but the Dutch Clock is the better version. It has an analogic clock and an additional digital time with seconds, in the lower part of the clock, and it also shows the day and the date. It allows you to name it, and you can have more clocks, for various cities or time zones.

Weatherbug is great for weather geeks, and it shows you the weather for the next three days for the location you set up. GMail is the decent way of managing you GMail account, and it also has sounds for alerting you on various events. CPU meter is a very useful gadget in my opinion, and it helps even the people who know least about computers to take care about their devices. It shows information about the CPU and it can work with eight, quad, triple or dual core machines. The image here is for a quad machine.

Another interesting metering gadget is Wireless Network Meter, and it shows the SSID, the quality of the wireless signal you receive, your IP and the up/down speeds.

Social networking hasn't been forgotten and there is a default gadget called Facebook Explorer, and it shows notifications and news without having to check the website all the time.