GMail Reader

GMail Reader is a very useful gadget for your desktop that notifies you whenever you receive a new email on your Gmail account. It is quite simple to configure.

After a rapid and uneventful setup procedure, you are greeted by a small frame that can be positioned anywhere on the screen, with the help of the mouse cursor.

Pairing up this option with the Windows built-in setting, that can make the frame stay on top of other windows, makes GMail Reader unintrusive, in addition to the fact that it is possible to enable sound notifications for incoming emails.

The first thing you need to do is access the Options panel to input your Gmail account credentials. Unfortunately, you cannot make the gadget remember these details, so you need to write the username and password every time you open GMail Reader.

The gadget shows a list with unread emails, namely their title and sender. Clicking an item opens the respective email in your default web browser and clears it from the list. There are no other options available for this tool. Unfortunately, you cannot manage multiple Gmail accounts, and multiple instances are not allowed (which applies to all Vista gadgets).

However, GMail Reader has a minimal impact on system performance and an excellent refresh rate (you cannot modify the time interval for email checkups). We have not come across any issues throughout our evaluation, as the app did hang or crash.

Although it runs smoothly on newer operating systems, the only downside to GMail Reader is that it does not display information accurately in the Options panel after configuring account settings.