Vista: What gadgets do you guys have running?

[tr3]

Me, I have the cpu monitor, the weather one, then the 3 i downloaded were teh 24 clock, the ping monitor, and the gmail checker

for you visual learners...
http://www.wtfhost.com//files/262/offt/vistagadgets.jpg

Im looking for a cool mp3 player so maybe i can leave it there instead of switing screens with winamp. (something with a library/search feature would be awesome)

[Lord_Malone]

How did you get to screen shot just the side bar?

[l3ender]

How did you get to screen shot just the side bar?

He probably just edited the picture in paint or a different photoshopping program.

But yeah I actually have my gadget bar disabled, but now that I see that you have a gmail checker, which looks awesome, so I might get into it again.

Can I have a link to the downloads for your gadgets? Thanks

[Dapperdan]

How did you get to screen shot just the side bar?

Snipping tool

[Lord_Malone]

Snipping tool

Thanks. I didn't realize I had it in the accessories.

I just installed some new ones. 60% opacity works for me...

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/1262/sidebarjx8.jpg

[Catweazle]

Goodness! I hadn't really fiddled with Sidebar Gadgets since pre-release builds, and just now tried the Weather gadget. Pleasantly surprised to see that it can now get me local weather here in country Victoria, Australia.

[PolicyofTruth]

I think alot of these are cool, but I figure why use more memory for novelty. That is what I disabled Aero as well.

[djnes]

I think alot of these are cool, but I figure why use more memory for novelty. That is what I disabled Aero as well.

I'm using 10 MB of memory with a few gadgets loaded. In addition to this, I don't believe Aero has any effect on overall memory usage.

[digital_exhaust]

I've got eight gadgets running in my sidebar and it's using a whopping 14mb of memory.

[Catweazle]

Yes, the belief that Sidebar or Aero are eating up memory and degrading performance is simply silly!

[Lord_Malone]

I think alot of these are cool, but I figure why use more memory for novelty. That is what I disabled Aero as well.

Aero is one of those features that make Vista really cool. But whatever floats your boat... Gadgets don't gobble up that much gas.

[tr3]

He probably just edited the picture in paint or a different photoshopping program.

But yeah I actually have my gadget bar disabled, but now that I see that you have a gmail checker, which looks awesome, so I might get into it again.

Can I have a link to the downloads for your gadgets? Thanks

Yeah, I did just do prtscr and edited it out with paint.


I got all my gadgets straight from the microsoft website. Right click the gadget bar, add gadgets, then just browse what they have there.

[tr3]

Aero is one of those features that make Vista really cool. But whatever floats your boat... Gadgets don't gobble up that much gas.

Good to hear that.. but with 512mb, i need all the ram i can get.

I figure if I didn't have anything "cool" to show off for vista (gadgets) I would just revert to XP.

[calebb]

Good to hear that.. but with 512mb, i need all the ram i can get.

I figure if I didn't have anything "cool" to show off for vista (gadgets) I would just revert to XP.

Slightly off topic..but...

Get a high-speed USB drive for ReadyBoost if you only have 512MB RAM! There's a nice 1GB USB Drive at Staples for ~$5 out the door w/coupon right now - the Sandisk Cruzer M2. It has impressive benchmarks! 9MB/sec write, 14MB/sec read. Check the hot deals forum.

[PolicyofTruth]

Yes, the belief that Sidebar or Aero are eating up memory and degrading performance is simply silly!

You could prob. convince me of that with the sidebar, but as far as Aero goes, Im just not buying that.

[calebb]

You could prob. convince me of that with the sidebar, but as far as Aero goes, Im just not buying that.

Aero processing is offloaded to your GPU.

[tr3]

Slightly off topic..but...

Get a high-speed USB drive for ReadyBoost if you only have 512MB RAM! There's a nice 1GB USB Drive at Staples for ~$5 out the door w/coupon right now - the Sandisk Cruzer M2. It has impressive benchmarks! 9MB/sec write, 14MB/sec read. Check the hot deals forum.

Thanks for the advice, but i already got in on that exact deal a few days ago. Haven't used it for ready boost yet because my flash stick is here with me, and my laptop is currently at my parent's place. Oh, and the deal officially died yesterday (Saturday)

[Catweazle]

You could prob. convince me of that with the sidebar, but as far as Aero goes, Im just not buying that.
Aero is not only offloaded to the graphics card, when the graphics card resources are needed for running fullscreen games Aero steps aside gracefully ;)

Buy it. Don't buy it. Doesn't matter to me if you want to play ostrich :)

[djnes]

Buy it. Don't buy it. Doesn't matter to me if you want to play ostrich :)

Don't you love reading all these threads were people are avoiding Vista, for misinformed reasons? I used to think ot was crazy how much Microsoft spent on marketing, but now I think it wasn't enough.

[griffinhart]

I'm not home for a Screenshot for you, but I'm using:

-Default Calendar
-Weather Bug
-Wireless Connection
-Wikipedia
-Drive Info
-Default Clock

On my laptop, I added a battery indicator gadget.

[ne0-reloaded]

aero isn't easy for laptop users. 512mb - 128mb for video card = slow OS. its a lot better now that im at 1.5 gb

[tr3]

-Wireless Connection
On my laptop, I added a battery indicator gadget.

Those 2 I will have to remember to put on once i get my laptop back.

[NightLinks]

I only use cpu & memory monitor.

[bbz_Ghost]

Aero is not only offloaded to the graphics card, when the graphics card resources are needed for running fullscreen games Aero steps aside gracefully ;)

Buy it. Don't buy it. Doesn't matter to me if you want to play ostrich :)

Well I hate to burst your bubble (hey, I gotta be me), but since most people aren't playing games anywhere near as often as they're using the machine for regular duties - whatever those may be - Aero doesn't offload everything to the video card, hence...

The Desktop Window Manager, aka dwm.exe. If you'll be so kind as to fire up Task Manager and take a look at that little application, you'll see that - when Aero is in operation - it's going to consume a goodly portion of RAM, meaning well into the 50MB or higher range most of the time.

While Aero offloads the math intensive work of rendering the interface to the GPU on the video card, it does not alleviate the RAM requirement for the Desktop Window Manager in Vista itself - the video RAM is not used for most of that stuff since it would slow down the performance of the machine and the rendering, actually.

So, for someone with a 512MB machine (and why anyone would be running Vista on such a machine is beyond my reasoning at this point, especially without using a Flash-RAM device of some kind to help with ReadyBoost), running Aero can be a considerable hit to the available chip RAM on a box.

Knowing this, it's pretty obvious to see that 50MB or more depending on how many open windows/applications are running (each one requires texture memory/etc; open more windows, dwm.exe RAM usage goes up) can be a pretty large chunk of working system RAM - which means more paging, which in turn means slower performance overall.

Just thought I'd toss that out there lest another myth get started rolling out of control... :p

Aero does offload the rendering and processing of the 3D interface, but not all the RAM requirements to get the job done.

[calebb]

The Desktop Window Manager, aka dwm.exe. If you'll be so kind as to fire up Task Manager and take a look at that little application, you'll see that - when Aero is in operation - it's going to consume a goodly portion of RAM, meaning well into the 50MB or higher range most of the time.


dwm.exe is not used while you're playing games. If your system is short on memory, the memory allocated for dwm.exe will be paged to disk to free up more memory for your game...

[calebb]

In fact...

When you turn on the eye candy in WinXP (animated menus, etc), your game performance will suffer ~3% - 5%.

When you turn on Aero in Windows Vista, your game performance suffers ~0%.

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aero_glass_performance/

[Catweazle]

Got that, bbz_Ghost? Now piss off with your technical terminologically correct bullshit!

Pfft! Begone!

:p

[bbz_Ghost]

Man I hate having to quote myself, especially around such obviously comprehensive people that never miss anything but but but...

Well I hate to burst your bubble (hey, I gotta be me), but since most people aren't playing games anywhere near as often as they're using the machine for regular duties - whatever those may be - Aero doesn't offload everything to the video card, hence...

I said that as the first part of my posting because I wanted to make it explicitly clear that I was talking about the majority of the time, meaning when people are/were not playing games and having as much RAM available for their software applications and usage was of paramount importance.

While it's all fine and dandy that Aero steps aside so graciously when full-screen 3D applications are running, aka "games," I wasn't talking about those times, I was referring to the other times when people were doing their regular stuff, aka "the Joe Average Sixpack":

- email
- surfing
- chatting
- reading
- posting
- multimedia (music, movies, etc)

So, for that guy with the 512MB machine, having as much RAM as possible not being used by dwm.exe when he's not playing games is again of the utmost importance or else it's "Say hello to my little friend, Mr. Pagefile!!!"

:p

[Catweazle]

You're side-tracking, but what the hell? I'll play along, because you really shouldn't be encouraging that little guy with his 512Mb. He's like the bloke who is wearing his son's jockettes. (Bikini briefs, for the uninitiated.)

When XP came out the majority of people had 64Mb to 128Mb of RAM installed. XP ran in 128MB, but it was painful. We soon found that it ran well in 384Mb, and afterwards found it that it was a joy to use with 1Gb installed.

The 'game' has changed. It's now possible but sometimes painful to run Vista in 512MB, it runs well in 1Gb, and it's a joy to use with 2Gb.

The little guy with 512Mb is like the fella wearing his son's jockettes. You could at least do the decent thing by encouraging him to wear jockettes that fit well, or even introduce him to boxer shorts!

[bbz_Ghost]

What the fuck are you babbling on about? :p

What part of any posting I've made so far would lead you to believe that I'm encouraging him to do anything except get more RAM - ASAP?

All my postings thus far have done is point out that Aero requires two things:

- System RAM for the Desktop Window Manager when it's in operation, and the amount of system RAM that dwm.exe requires is based on how many applications are open at any given time - more applications open means more RAM required to provide space for their window contents; less applications open means less RAM required to provide more RAM for the rest of the applications that are running.

- A video card that's DX9 capable and has Shader 2.0 support.

That's it.

I'm not encouraging him to do anything except get more RAM because Vista with 512MB of RAM and trying to use Aero is basically like shooting yourself in the foot. Sure, it's pretty, but Aero itself requires system RAM called by dwm.exe - Vista cannot use the RAM on the video card to run applications, and dwm.exe is an application, period.

If your post was meant as a sarcastic or comical josh, fine, but I didn't see a single smiley that time around. On a 512MB machine my recommendation is: disable Aero and use Vista Basic - you'll get back the ~50MB of RAM dwm.exe typically requires just to keep Aero running all by itself. dwm.exe will still operate, however, but it'll barely use any noticeable RAM whatsoever, and certainly nothing like it eats up with Aero in operation.

I never said anything about gaming; in fact, everything I've said with respect to dwm.exe and system RAM usage is about not gaming and how dwm.exe uses system RAM when Aero is running, nothing more, nothing less.

Geez...

[Catweazle]

:eek: :p :D :o :confused: :rolleyes: ;) :mad: :) :(

There. That's the quota for the month. If you can't tell that post was jocular then you need to lighten up a bit, get a grip on yourself, and l;eave an old fella with a bit of dignity.

By the way, back on topic I have a currency converter and the slideshow active in Sidebar, as well as the clock. System tray time readout is small enough to be painful, IMO. It's about the only thing I really use Sidebar for.

[bbz_Ghost]

You old timers, no fun at all I swear.

Gotta love it when people use all these fancy gadgets and stuff when Windows still has the best CPU/RAM gauge of all: Task Manager... :p

I've seen a few neat gadgets but, for me they're effectively useless most of the time, but to each his own I guess.

</off_topic>

[Focker]

Why did you even post in this thread at all if you're not using any gadgets and do not plan on using any?

[Nasty_Savage]

Haven't found many that I find useful, though I like the weather and the magic 8-ball.

[ShadowDragon]

Sfkilla's MultiMeter Dual Core
Sfkilla's HDD meter (3x)
random Network monitor
slideshow
Default Weather
Weather Radar
MyGamerCard
http://www.shadoweb.net/enigma/sidebar.jpg