The gadget displays several important parameters by default after installation, including the current memory usage, the used, free and total space of all hard drives, the cpu load of every core, cpu usage and clock. Several graphs display the values in addition to numeric representations.

Some users may want to increase the size of the gadget’s display to make it better readable, which can be helpful especially on larger displays. A click on the settings button allows that and a lot more. The size of the gadget window can be resized to every available size. The value is set as a percentage of the default value. But that’s not the only setting and option available in the eight tabs.

From useful double-click actions to spawn the Windows task manager, to changing the display of graphs, color schemes and interface elements, and enabling additional hardware parameters like core temperatures, users who delve into the options find a lot of useful settings.

It is furthermore possible to hide specific information from the System Monitor II interface which is helpful if space is of the essence or if those values are not necessarily needed.

System Monitor II is a great gadget for Vista and Windows 7. Mainly because it combines the most important hardware information in one highly configurable interface, and because its option to launch the task manager with a double-click. That’s really helpful to check a peaking value in the task manager.

The gadget is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. The project page is available at the developer’s website.

The gadget can be configured to display an image by entering an url that is pointing to that image. It can therefor theoretically be used to display a permanent image. More interesting than that is the ability to point it to the url of an webcam image that gets automatically updated regularly server side.

This is the intended use of the gadget. The Windows user has to specify the image url and the interval in which the image will be pulled from the server in seconds. The default interval is set to 9999 seconds with the option to change the interval during the configuration.

The gadget is compatible with the jpg, png and gif image formats and will display the image in a 320×240 window on the computer desktop.

TWIV can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7.

All the fixes that Microsoft is offering can be accessed directly at the official website. A recent addition is the Fix It gadget which can be added to both the Windows Vista and the Windows 7 operating system (and probably even for the Windows XP sidebar mod.).

The Fix It sidebar gadget provides access to all of the fixes that have been created by Microsoft for the various operating systems and applications. It offers a search that can be used to search the database for fix it solutions or a tag cloud alternatively. Solutions will be displayed in the gadget including their name and download count. A click on a problem will open a new window with additional information and a link to the one click solution.

The footer of the gadget contains links to additional information including the Technet and Facebook pages of the Fix It project. The Microsoft Fix It gadget is a handy tool for users who use the sidebar in Windows Vista or Windows 7.