Gadgets—simple desktop "mini programs" that often can be downloaded for free—add useful productivity tools, as well as some fun, to your PC. Windows® 7 Professional comes with a desktop gadget galley installed, including these handy items:
- Feed headlines—keep track of the latest news, sports, and entertainment headlines.
- Outlook appointments—display the next three to five upcoming appointments from your Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 calendar in the Windows7 Professional Sidebar, just as they appear in the Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar.
- Slide show—brighten your desktop with an endless slideshow of your favorite pictures of your children, your pets, or your vacations, or switch between all three.
- Currency converter—make sure you have the right sums for international travel and business deals.
You can find plenty more gadgets online at Windows Live Gallery. Consider some of these popular ones:
- Facebook and Twitter Explorer. These two gadgets provide a simple desktop interface that lets you see and add messages to the popular social networking sites without opening a browser.
- Activity Tracker. If you want to track the time you spend on certain tasks, this gadget lets you click in and click out of chores—like a desktop punch card—which you can use to generate activity graphs that can be exported as a Microsoft Excel file.
- Magic Folder. If you want to reduce desktop clutter, you can simply drag files into this gadget. It will read the file extension and move the file to the proper location, such as putting image files (e.g., JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF) in the Pictures folder and document files (doc, xls, ppt) in the Document folder.
- Language Translator—an easy-to-use device that works in 43 languages. Flowers and O'Brien, a five-person law firm, has been testing a translator gadget to communicate with off-shore clients who speak Spanish and Portuguese. "We can quickly translate words or whole paragraphs in seconds, helping us with e-mails or documents in the moment," says partner Kerry Flowers.
Working with gadgets is easy. Once you install a gadget it appears in your desktop. You can resize some gadgets to get even more information, such as news headlines and weather, and you can customize the appearance of some gadgets.
MXINSPECT, a web security firm, even built its own gadgets to use with Windows 7. "We use a custom-built Threat Gadget to track our system's constant stream of data," says Jennifer Shine, the company's chief technology officer. "We need accurate, updated information, because it's our business to respond quickly." With Windows Vista and XP, gadgets could only be placed in one fixed location and took up too much room. "With Windows 7, our gadgets float and are no longer limited to the sidebar," she says. We can now take advantage of multiple screens to keep tabs on our data. Windows 7 has made our gadgets more accessible and less obtrusive, all at the same time."
Here's another fun tip for how to find your gadgets quickly. Just point your mouse at the square on the very right bottom of your monitor, just next to the time and date. Your open windows will fade, offering you a quick peek at your desktop and gadgets. When you move the mouse, the open windows instantly reappear.
