My Top 6 Windows Gadgets
I’m sure everyone has their own favorite Windows 7 gadgets. Here are mine (in no particular order):
- Pandora Radio Player - Pandora is one of my absolute favorite music services and the convenience of having a sidebar gadget makes it even better. Most important of all, listening to music via the gadget doesn’t appear to count towards the main site’s 36-hour monthly limit (thanks @farmdwg for the tip).
- All CPU Meter - What geek DOESN’T want to know their system resource utilization? This gadget gives me a real-time snapshot of system details including CPU usage (across multiple cores), RAM usage, etc. It also has a nice historical graph.
- Network Meter - Similar to the CPU meter, this gadget helps to keep track of historical bandwidth usage as well as real-time transfer stats. It also also shows internal/external IP addresses.
- Weather - What more is there to say? This gadget is part of the default Windows set and is useful for keeping track of current weather conditions for a select area.
- Digital World Clock - The nature of my work requires me to be aware of various time zones. I use multiple instances of this gadget to keep track of times in popular areas.
- 7 Sidebar - I may be in the minority here, but I was disappointed to hear that the gadget sidebar wasn’t available in Windows 7. In researching, I came across various hacks that involved replacing system files but that seemed far too messy. Thankfully, I found a dedicated gadget that restores the sidebar functionality and adds a few features too.
