Hands On: A Hard Look at Windows Vista

Sidebar and gadgets
Either you're a software gadget person or you're not, and that distinction will go a long way toward determining whether you think Windows Vista's Sidebar and its accompanying gadgets are exceedingly cool and useful, or simply a waste of screen real estate. We fall into the pro-gadget side, and we use them all day long.

Gadgets are mini-apps that can grab and display information from the Internet, from a network, or from your computer. They can display stock quotes, the weather, your current RAM use, and so on. There's no two ways about it; they're direct rip-offs of Mac OS X's widgets. But if you're going to steal something, why not steal from the best?

But two are extremely useful -- the CPU Meter that displays your CPU and RAM use, and a very good Feed Headlines gadget that gathers all of the RSS feeds you've subscribed to in Internet Explorer and scrolls through them as they arrive. The RSS gadget in particular is a great one. You need do nothing at all to get the latest news and blog posts; they just scroll by on your screen all day. Click one to see a summary; click again to go to the Web site for the full post.

Two of the more useful gadgets: a weather tracker and a CPU meter. (Click image to see larger view)

Some people might think that because few useful gadgets ship with Windows Vista, it means the feature is a bomb. Not so. You can go online to get more gadgets, and over time, you'll most likely see a very robust community dedicated to building them. Within a year of Vista's ship date, don't be surprised if there are plenty of useful gadgets there waiting for you.

Windows Calendar
This may be the best new application that ships with Windows Vista. It's remarkably easy to use, yet offers surprisingly advanced features, including the ability to send out invitations to meetings directly from within the program, set reminders and create to-do lists. You can create group calendars to share with others who use the same computer, and you can publish your calendar on the Web as well. Best of all is that it's compatible with iCalendar, the main group calendar standard. So when you send or receive invitations, you can automatically sync your calendar with others, and you can subscribe to calendars posted on the Web.

Windows Calendar, our pick of the bundled app pack. (Click image to see larger view)