After the introduction of Windows Vista sidebar gadgets and Windows 7 gadgets, so many of them came out which simplified a lot of work and enhanced the look of desktop. Now its the time to customise Windows 7 taskbar i.e. Superbar, to get most out of it. In this series of customising it, I had posted “ Make invisible/secret icon in Windows 7 Taskbar “ which most most you liked.
Here I will introduce you to gadgets like CPU Meter, Memory Meter, Disk I/O, Volume Control, Battery Meter, Mail Checker and Weather notifier. All these gadgets make use if taskbar band colour and thubnail to notify you about the condition of above mentioned.
Here’s the list of gadgets and links to download them:
1. CPU Meter, Memory Meter, Disk I/O:
As you can see in above screenshot, this gadget shows colourful indication of CUP and memory uses (Disk I/O is not shown). Also using the sliders in the ultra-simple options screens you can choose the update frequency and set at what percentage of utilization your indicators switch from green to yellow and then to red. Pin them to your taskbar and you will get a simple, Win7-friendly heads up display of your PC’s vitals.
>Download these from here: Taskbar Meters and extract the contents to a folder on your hard drive. Inside you’ll find three executable files – one for CPU, one for memory and one for disk I/O. Launch them and you see them in taskbar.
2. Volume Control, Battery Meter:
Here five meters are available: battery, volume, disk, CPU, and memory. The meters are quite configurable, with options for custom colours, overlays, and whether or not to launch them at start-up. The pop-up thumbnail of volume gadget have slider, mute check-box, and others as you can see in above screenshot. Battery/power gadget are also active with charging status of battery and indicates whether it is plug-in or on battery.
>Download these from here: Superbar meters.
3. Mail Checker:
Just run the gadget, enter your email, password, and select the refresh time. When done, hit the save button, minimize it, and then pin it to the taskbar. Now it will check for new emails every specified time(refresh time). If a new email arrives the icon will turn from grey to red and will show the number of emails in your inbox. Hit the taskbar icon and it will open a new window showing you the email with the following details – sender name, subject, and send time. This gadget is really useful and great on saving time, but unfortunately this is available only for GMail users.
>Download it from here: c21-GMailNotifier
4. Weather notifier:
This gadget saved me a lot of desktop space, as it directly integrates with superbar. It shows you current weather conditions in your area (it even utilizes the Windows 7 progress indicator to show relative humidity in the background). Right-click the icon to pull up its Jump List and WeatherBar displays a four-day forecast with low and high temperatures.
>Download it from here: WeatherBar
All these gadgets/app are free of cost. Hope you will definitely give them a try as these save a lot of desktop space and uses colour codes to symbolize activities. Until this date I know these gadgets, if you know more then please let me know in comments below.
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