Vista SideBar

I thought I'd spend a few moments talking about my favorite sidebar gadgets in Windows Vista. For those of you not yet using this OS, and I know there are people who refuse to for some reason, the sidebar is literally a bar on the side of your monitor which allows to to mount some tools and gadgets. Here are my top 5:

1. The Slide Show: this little unit shuffles through the pictures you have stored on your computer and gives you an extra large thumbnail. It doesn't sound like much but it's amazing how often I see a picture come through that I haven't looked at in quite sometime and stop for a minute to view it. The gadget allows you to choose how many or how few pics it will shuffle through, allowing you to go to full screen simply by clicking it. Nice!
2. The Battery Monitor: There are many variations on this but I like this one best. Shows you a percentage and a graphic representation of how much power is remaining on your laptop. Clicking on it also opens up the Power options for your laptop, allowing you to adjust settings and either increase battery time or power, depending on your needs. Handy!
3. Binary Clock: No geek platform is complete without and actual honest to God Binary clock and I like this one. While it is not a true Binary representation, it's closer akin to BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) it is easier to read than true binary (ask me about writing a program to do this on Assembler sometime!). By the way, this clock is showing the time as 10:37 and 22 seconds.  Nerdy!
4. System Tools: I use this constantly. It comes in a couple of sizes but I like the complete set, it includes a few things that I never need but it is nice t have the Task Manager, Restart, Shutdown, and Sleep buttons on your desktop at all times; the command prompt is handy too, but I find with the UAC enabled anytime I go into command prompt I need elevated credentials so I end up going into the Program List anyway, still it is nice for things like ipconfig.
5. The CPU Monitor: No computer user should have to go another day without being able to instantly see what their current CPU and RAM usage are. Vista comes with it's own, but I prefer this one, it's a nice graphical representation with multi core capabilities. They come in many styles and types, but this is my favorite. If you click on it you get the task manager too, so you can see why you're computer is working so hard or where your RAM is being eaten. Techy!
   
   

   These are just a quick list of my favorites, there are a lot more of them here, so go check it out and find the ones that suit your needs. If you're good at scripting you can even create and submit your own, most of these tools are written by aspiring nerds who want to show off what they can do.