Google Mail – Sidebar Gadget

Google Mail is a small widget which was designed in order to help you view the number of unread mails.

The interface sports a minimal design, which allows even people with little to no experience with computers, find their way around it with great ease. It only encloses the number of unread messaged from your Google Mail inbox. Aside from that, it is highly non-obtrusive, as it does not appear in the taskbar or system tray, and it does not occupy a lot of space on the desktop.

Clicking this piece of information opens a new tab in your default web browser and launches Gmail. This widget also plays a sound when a new e-mail is received, so as to let you know with great ease.

From the settings panel, you can change the background color, enable or disable the audio notification, and input your account details (username and password).

Right-clicking the tool’s frame brings up a context menu, quite similar to the one used in most Windows Gadgets, which enables you to move or close this widget, add new ones and access the configuration pane. In addition to that, you can force it to always stay on top of other programs, and change the opacity levels (from 20% up to 100%).

CPU and RAM usage is minimal, which means the system’s resources are not going to be tampered with by this gadget, and you can run alongside other utilities without experiencing problems.

To sum up, Google Mail is a pretty decent piece of software, with a good response time and user-friendly environment. Nevertheless, power users might find it a bit too simple and it could benefit greatly from an update.