Gadgets are small programs that perform one task, such as the weather for your zip code, a slide show of the pictures on your computer, or the current price per share of your stock investments. Most gadgets are constantly updating themselves and provide their information to you at a glance, without having to open a program or browse to an internet site.

Windows Vista was the first Microsoft operating system to allow the use of gadgets. If you opted to use them, they were stored on the 'sidebar', which as its name implies, went down the right side of your screen, sitting 'on top of' the Windows desktop. Whether you used one gadget or five, the sidebar took up the same amount of space. Many Vista users, especially those with smaller monitors, felt that the sidebar took up too much screen 'real estate' and therefore decided not to use any gadgets.

Windows 7 has improved upon the gadget concept by divorcing them from the sidebar. Windows 7 allows you to place individual gadgets anywhere that you have free space on your desktop. This post will demonstrate how to add one of the weather gadgets to the desktop.

Right-click on an empty spot on your desktop and choose Gadgets from the context menu.

The Gadgets dialog box will be displayed.

Clicking on the Show details button in the lower left will expand the dialog box. The expanded area will display some additional information about the selected gadget.

To add a particular gadget (weather in this demonstration) select it with the mouse, right mouse click, and choose Add from the context menu.

After a very brief time the gadget should appear on the desktop. You can drag it to a new location with your mouse.
When you hover your mouse over the gadget, a mini toolbar will appear as shown in the next screen shot.

The top tool ("X") will close the gadget. If the gadget supplies multiple display versions, the middle tool will toggle between the versions. The next screen shot shows the expanded weather gadget adding the forecast for the next three days.

Most gadgets allow you to set some options. For example, this gadget is currently only useful if you are living in the New York area, or are planning a trip to New York in the very near future. A stock quote gadget would have to let you enter ticker symbols for the stocks you are following. A Twitter gadget could very well require your Twitter name and password.

Clicking on the bottom "wrench" tool opens the options window. In our weather example we are changing the zip code from New York to Chicago.

After clicking OK, our gadget should now display the temperature, sky conditions, and three-day forecast for Chicago.

In addition to the nine gadgets displayed in the gadget dialog box, you can download hundreds more by visiting the Microsoft web site . Most gadgets do not cost anything.

Note that although most gadgets will work perfectly in either Vista or Windows 7, as Microsoft's web site states, "Some gadgets are optimized for Windows Vista and might not provide the same experience if installed on Windows 7. Some gadgets (such as those using High DPI) only work on computers running Windows 7."

The Windows operating system contains many features. Internet Explorer, the Windows games, DVD Maker, and Windows Media Center are some examples. Perhaps you do not use nor will ever use some of these features. For example, you may prefer Firefox over Internet Explorer as your web browser. Perhaps you use a third party DVD creation program such as Roxio(tm) over Windows' DVD Maker. Businesses may want to disable the games to keep employees from frittering away their time. Or possibly Windows 7 installed a feature that is irrelevant to your machine: Tablet PC features on a desktop computer. To prevent a feature from being available in versions prior to Windows 7 you had to uninstall it using the same procedure as any program. If you later decided that you wanted the feature, you had to dig out your Windows CD and reinstall it.

Windows 7 has improved on this procedure by letting you turn a feature off. Because the feature is not removed from the hard drive you can turn it back on without having to go through the reinstallation routine. [NOTE: Since the files required for the feature are still on your hard drive you do not save any disk space by turning features off.] You can turn a feature on or off using the following steps. You must be an administrator to turn features on or off.

Click the Start Orb and then choose Control Panel, Programs and Features. The shield indicates that you must be an administrator to make changes.

Clicking on the 'Turn Windows features on or off' link opens the Windows Features dialog box. Items whose boxes are checked are on, while those whose boxes are empty are off. Items with a plus sign, such as Print and Document services, have multiple features. You can select all or part of group to turn on or off. A group with a filled-in box rather than a check box indicates that only a portion of the group's features is on.

After making your changes, click the OK button. If the changes are successful you will see the dialog box requesting that you restart your computer.

If you are not logged in as an administrator you will receive an error message similar to the following after clicking the OK button.