Users who visit the Windows Live Gallery page are now redirected to a Looking for gadgets page that states that the “Windows Live Gallery has been retired” in order “to focus support on the much richer set of opportunities available for the newest version of Windows”.

The informational page furthermore states that Microsoft “is no longer supporting development or uploading of new Gadgets”. Some desktop gadgets are still available for download as part of the Windows Personalization Gallery, but no where near as much as before.

It may come as a surprise that Microsoft decided to retire the Windows Live Gallery before the official release of the Windows 8 operating system. While it may make sense to get the majority of developers to develop with Windows 8 compatibility in mind, it means at the same time that Vista and Windows 7 users have less options when it comes to downloading and adding gadgets to their operating system.

The Redmond company wants developers to switch from developing gadgets for Windows to developing Metro-style apps for the upcoming Windows 8 operating system.

Windows Developer Preview allows you to leverage your existing skills and code assets so you can create great experiences for your customers. Gadget and web developers can now use their HTML5 and CSS3 skills to build native Windows apps. .NET Developers can use XAML, C#, and Visual Basic to build beautiful Metro-style apps. Game developers can use the power of DirectX 11.1 to build amazing, immersive gaming experiences. Driver developers benefit from increased productivity with the new, integrated Visual Studio development environment.

Not all developers on the other hand will have enough resources to build apps for an operating system that has not yet been released. It is also unclear how well Windows 8 will do, considering the controversial move to the Metro user interface.

Microsoft’s move to shut down the Windows Live Gallery is on the other hand not the immediate end for existing and future gadgets. Developers and companies on the other hand will have to find hosting for their gadgets if they did rely on the gallery up to this point to host and promote their gadgets.

Microsoft on the looking for gadgets page suggests to use the companies own CodePlex project hosting service as a new home for Windows gadgets.

What’s your take on the retiring of the Windows Live Gallery?

Gadgets can be helpful depending on a user’s work situation. Gadgets are available for all kinds of tasks from displaying hardware information to Internet search forms and multimedia players.

This article reviews five desktop gadgets that are hardware related. Their usage as well depends on the user’s situation. A desktop computer users will not necessarily run a gadget that is displaying the remaining battery power while a netbook user might not be interested in the a gadget that displays the load of each cpu core.

Notebook Info 2

The name of the gadget already implies that it has been designed for mobile computer systems like netbooks or notebooks. It can display a variety of information including battery level and status, WiFi network status, cpu and ram usage, power-plans, uptime, a clock, alarm and calendar and more.

The settings can be used to display only the relevant items on the computer desktop. It is for instance possible to get rid of the calendar if that is not needed.

download it here

All CPU Meter

This gadget displays cpu related information including the used, free and total computer memory and the load on each cpu core. It did however detect eight cores on our quad-core test system.

download it here

Drives Meter

Can display hard drive information like the number of used, free and total space of each hard drive. A total of six hard drive partitions can be configured in the gadget’s options.

download it here

Wired Network Meter

This gadget displays many network information like the internal and external IP address or the up and downstream of the selected network adapter.

download it here

Wireless Network Meter

From the same developer as the wired network meter but created for wireless connections. It displays the same information as the wired network meter plus information about the connection (secure, not secure) and the signal.

download it here

The gadgets should be compatible with both Windows Vista and Windows 7. Interested users can browse the more than 3800 gadgets offered at the Windows Live Gallery for other gadgets.

What’s your take on Windows gadgets? Are you using them at all? If so, which are you using?

I had deleted the downloaded gadget installation file but noticed that the gadget was still listed in the gadget list. Figured that it had to be stored somewhere if it appeared in that list and decided to search for the gadgets location in Windows.

Turns out there is more than one location where Windows 7 and Windows Vista are storing gadgets. The common locations for saving gadgets in Windows are either Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets or Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets.

The third party gadget that I had installed was stored in the AppData folder where all third party gadgets had been saved by Windows. Each gadget is stored in its own folder and it is possible to copy that folder and add it to another Windows installation so that the gadget becomes available there as well.

Hope this helps anyone running Windows Vista or Windows 7 to locate the gadgets in their operating system as well.

Facebook Explorer

Facebook Explorer is a popular gadget that can be used to read new messages that are posted by friends at the Facebook website. It is furthermore possible to set or delete the current status of the user’s Facebook account from within the gadget. The gadget needs to be authorized before it can be used. This is done during setup where the gadget will display links to Facebook so that it can be authorized. A Facebook login is necessary for that authorization.

My Outlook

A gadget that displays Outlook information including incoming appointments and tasks, a search box to find contacts, incoming mails with options to reply, forward, delete, open or save attachments and more.

GMail Reader

The Gmail Reader gadget will check a configured Gmail account for new emails regularly. It will display a summary of the latest 20 received emails and notify the user with a sound alert if new emails have arrived in the Gmail account.

Twitter Explorer

The Twitter Explorer gadget will display the latest messages that the logged in Twitter user received with possibilities to reply immediately to those messages and to open links that have been posted in the messages. The gadget offers a search and filters to only display replies or mentions.

Messenger Gadget

The Messenger Gadget displays Windows Live Messenger account information. It displays contact status information and allows the user to start chat session and update the status right from the Messenger gadget.

Pop3 Checker

A handy gadget for users who use Pop3 email accounts informing the logged in user about new emails that arrived in the email accounts.

Skype Gadget

The Skype Gadget is a little informative gadget for the Skype voice over IP software. It displays the status of each contact in Skype with possibilities to immediately initiate a chat or call with the selected user. It is furthermore possible to dial any number in the gadget as well.

And that’s it. These seven gadgets should come in handy for Windows 7 and Windows Vista users. Let us know in the comments if you use these or others in the supported operating systems. You can check out the Windows Live Gallery for thousands of additional gadgets for both Windows 7 and Vista.

Update: Microsoft has retired the Windows Live Gallery in preparation of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system. You can read more about the topic here: Microsoft Retires Gadgets In Preparation Of Windows 8 Launch

Many Windows Vista users like the Windows Sidebar, others feel that it is to restricted to one part of the screen. Microsoft has already announced that they will change that behavior in Windows 7 so that users can place gadgets wherever they want on the desktop.

It was only a matter of time until someone would port the Windows Vista Sidebar to Windows XP. Joshoon managed to port the real Windows Sidebar to Windows XP by making use of Alky For Applications. You might remember Alky from the time when Windows Vista came out. That was at the same time when Microsoft announced Vista only applications and Alky was supposed to make them compatible with Windows XP (like the games Shadowrun or Halo 2)

The pack includes three different applications that are needed to install, display and maintain the Windows Vista Sidebar in Windows XP. First there is Alky For Applications which can simply be installed. Once that is done the Windows Vista Sidebar can be installed and will be operational afterwards. The pack comes with many gadgets and a tool called Gadget Gallery which can be used to add new gadgets to the sidebar.

Already available gadgets can be added by right-clicking the sidebar and selecting a gadget from the list of installed gadgets. Each gadget can be added by right-clicking it and selecting Add from the context menu.

Even more interesting than this is the ability to download gadgets from the Windows Vista Gallery site over at Microsoft. It requires some manual work but it’s easily done and works perfectly fine. The gadget needs to be downloaded and unpacked. It comes with the .gadget extension but it can easily be unpacked by most unpackers. Worked fine with 7-zip.

The directory that will be created by unpacking the .gadget file, adding the .gadget extension to the root directory of it and moving it to the Shared Gadgets directory of the sidebar application.

One interesting feature is the ability to detach a gadget from the sidebar so that it can be moved freely around on the desktop.

The Sidebar requires roughly 20 Megabytes of computer memory when displaying the default three gadgets.