Mini Control Panel is an useful gadget that acts like a small control panel which sits in your sidebar.

At the top of the panel you have the time, date and the number of your online Google Talk Friends, this data being refreshed every minute.

Then you have an extensive set of buttons with control panel properties, useful programs and a Run box at the bottom in which you can type just what you would type in the Run dialog and then hit enter or click the arrow button to launch the desired program.

You can also view CPU and memory usage statistics + enable your favorite settings in the gadget options.