Sidebar gadget that I like to use

[GFreeman]

Hello everyone.

As a Windows 7 user I started using the Windows sidebar. It's nice that in Windows 7 the sidebar doesn't eat that much memory. For all my gadgets installed it only eats about 30 megs. In Vista it would eat up to 100 megs. Also when running in 3d mode the sidebar is kinda deactivated and pops back on when you go back to Windows.

I found a few cool gadgets I'd like to share with you.

1. Core temp gadget. This one is actually pretty cool! It can be used for monitoring CPU load, voltages, temperatures per Core and memory usage. As I like changing my OC setting in Windows I noticed this little neat gadget shows the true CPU speed as you for example measure with CPU-Z. Simular gadgets just show the settings that Windows found at startup using WMI.

2. Another cool gadget I found is called GPU observer. It detects your type of videocard (nVidia or ATI) and shows temps and fan speeds. Pretty cool!

3. Another gadget that comes in handy is Network traffic. It shows you up and download speeds it's pretty neat. This gadget doesn't take as much resources as the Network Monitor gadget does.

4. This gadget is called DriveActivity. I use it for monitoring my harddisk.

5. I'm also using the gadget SystemControl. You can use this gadget for all kinds of commands. Like shutting down or hibernate your system. It has some handy features. Check it out!

6. The last gadget I think is pretty cool. It's called WeatherCenter and it shows the local weather worldwide depending on what country and city you've set up in the configuration. It then refreshes automatically every once in while to show you new weather developments. The funny thing was our weekend predictions here in Holland was a nice sunny sky last Saturday. This gadget told me it was gonna poor with rain and so it did... LOL! Quite neat!

Have a look at my screenies below.

 

[Optix]

The sidebar is nice for at a glance purposes but I can't justify the resources required to run the gizmos, plus if I need to monitor my gear it's probably because I'm overclocking it meaning I have separate applications open that can handle it.

 

[GFreeman]

This makes good sense if you are benching yes! You want as much resources to be disabled in that case. Yet for normal daily use the new sidebar in Windows 7 is eating ALOT less memory and resources. For me it barely eats 30 megs. It used to eat around 100 megs or more in Windows Vista. Also in Vista often multiple sidebar.exe processes did appear, in 7 it's just one single process. I do like to use some of these neat gadgets for monitoring my system. Just to make sure it doesn't get ill LOL!

 

[Psi*]

Does it log the data to a file? Although a screen capture for a period time would possibly be adequate. Can you control the width/time of the logging window as shown in your screen shot?

I will be making a modification to my cooling system of which similar modifications have shown several degree improvement. So I am looking for something that will allow for a easy comparison of before & after.

 

[GFreeman]

Does it log the data to a file? Although a screen capture for a period time would possibly be adequate. Can you control the width/time of the logging window as shown in your screen shot?

I will be making a modification to my cooling system of which similar modifications have shown several degree improvement. So I am looking for something that will allow for a easy comparison of before & after.

Well the Coretemp gadget needs Coretemp.exe to be running in the background. That program has the ability to log the temperatures yes. But you can't turn that setting on in the gadget. You have to open Coretemp itself to play with these settings. The gadget just shows the actual temps, Mhz, CPU and ram load. When taking the screen shot my system was busy LOL.

 

[Optix]

This makes good sense if you are benching yes! You want as much resources to be disabled in that case. Yet for normal daily use the new sidebar in Windows 7 is eating ALOT less memory and resources. For me it barely eats 30 megs. It used to eat around 100 megs or more in Windows Vista. Also in Vista often multiple sidebar.exe processes did appear, in 7 it's just one single process. I do like to use some of these neat gadgets for monitoring my system. Just to make sure it doesn't get ill LOL!

Thanks for the info. I'm still stuck in Vista mode, which as you said eat resources like Kirstie Alley eats cake.

 

[GFreeman]

I see what you mean. I never used the Sidebar in Vista. It's crazy to sacrifice about 100 megs of RAM or even more for it. Not to mention in Vista it spoils the 3d performance as well. In Windows 7 the sidebar is kinda deactivated if you are gaming.