Using the Windows Gadget Gallery and Gadgets

Windows 7 has a Windows Gadget Gallery desktop feature. The Gallery contains tools, or gadgets, displayed as icons on the desktop. With gadgets, you can quickly access various handy features to check the weather, organize your calendar, feed online data directly to your desktop, and more.

Here are some of the things you can do with the Windows gadgets that cover in this tutorial:

• Work with images. The Slide Show gadget is a continuous slide show of the photos in your Pictures folder.
• Organize your time. The Calendar gadget displayed on your desktop helps you keep track of the days, weeks, and months. The Clock gadget displays the time with an old-style wall clock and allows you to make changes to your time zone.
• Play with puzzles. A neat little Picture Puzzle gadget allows you to play a game that's so tiny, even your boss won't notice you're not actually working.
• Work with online data. The Feed Headlines gadget allows you to grab data from online RSS feeds (a format used for syndication of news and other content), such as the latest news or other useful information. Stocks and Currency Conversion gadgets provide up-to-the-minute data on stocks and currency values.
• Keep an eye on your system performance. The CPU Meter gadget provides up-to-date information about your computer processor speed and available memory.