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| CURRENT SECTION :: TechZone | UK's most visited IT Contractor Site - 250k unique visitors March 2008 |
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Vista has been widely derided for being unreliable, slow and incompatible – and the lack of any substantial new features has also failed to win it friends. But one new element of the UI has opened up yet another way for customisers to personalise their environment – the Gadget. Gadgets are mini-applications that sit in a bay on your desktop, and bear more than a passing resemblance to the desktop Widgets Apple introduced with OSX. They’re not for everyone – some have complained that they hog resources, and if you’re not careful you can end up with a desktop that looks like a teenager’s MySpace page – but used sparingly, the better ones can be invaluable, or fun, or (rarely) both. And with that in mind, here’s the CUK roundup of six of the best tools for your desktop. Better still, they’re all free. Windows Live Messenger Gadget. Live Messenger – better known to most people by its old name of MSN Messenger – is an increasingly bloated and clunky application. Not so the gadget version. It sits neatly in a corner of your desktop and gives you most of the functionality of the full-blown version. You might not be able to send someone an animated pig, but unless you’re a 13 year old, that’s probably not a problem. Download link. Multi Meter. This one is only really useful if you’re into your hardware in a big way, but for the rest of us it looks cool. It shows your CPU and memory utilisation, and if you have a dual core processor, the readout shows the load on each core separately. Download link. Auction Sidebar Tool for eBay. If you’re an eBay addict, this is the gadget for you. It shows a summary of your My eBay information – auctions you’re bidding on, items you’re selling, that sort of thing – and lets you search and browse the site too. It’s also certified by the auction giant, so you don’t have to worry about your details being stolen by scammers. Well, no more so than usual, anyway. Download link. Outlook Info. If you’ve ever had a Windows PDA or smartphone, the idea of this will be familiar. It shows a summary of the most important information from Outlook, such as your unread mail, calendar and to-do list, on your desktop. Sadly, it doesn’t fully support Outlook 2003, but for Office 2007 users it’s a must-have. Download link. Say It. Type in a sentence, and your computer will say it! Anyone who ever used first-generation Macs at school will recognise the childish fun to be had in making your computer swear and insult colleagues in a robot voice. So pointless that the latest version is advertised as providing “even more features to help you waste your day”. But Stephen Hawking impressions never get old – trust us on this one. Download link. Amnesty Generator. Our top pick isn’t actually a Gadget at all. Amnesty Widgets’ Generator application will take a web widget and turn it into a Vista Gadget. The Generator takes HTML, so if there’s a YouTube video or a Google widget that you just can’t live without, now it can sit on your desktop. It does have its limitations – for example, you couldn’t add a Facebook application, because you’d have to be logged in – but it’s still a handy tool. Download link. Graham Taylor Mar 13, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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