14 DAY TRIAL // The truth is that Vista enjoys a slow adoption rate although there are plenty of reasons to believe that the users actually like it. One of them is found in the constant attempts to replicate at least its looks on its younger, less potent in this sense, brother, XP. A short time after Vista hit the shelves, plenty of apps mimicking its looks on XP started to appear like mushrooms. In some cases the results were great, but minor defects were still visible.
I don't know how popular is the side bar in Vista, but I have grown very fond of it and I have a few gadgets I can't do without (some of them from Vista, others created with a special app). But, if you are looking for something offering more functionality, give Desktop Sidebar a spin. It is absolutely free and, just like the side bar in Vista, it comes packed with a set of apps designed to help you better manage all your work. And the advantage is that it works on both XP and Vista, absolutely free.
Installing the software is a breeze and, at the end of the process, you will have a new side bar cramped with all sort of useful applets, starting from an analog clock, local weather display, feed reader, media player, to integrate your QuickLaunch shortcuts and show a command line field for getting faster access to different locations on the Internet or programs installed on the system.
If you think this is all Desktop Sidebar has to offer, you are dead wrong, as its functionality goes further into integrating even Windows Mail or Outlook mail client. In fact, there are about 18 panels available for you and more to download online. Each of the panels comes with its own palette of settings and can be undocked, just like the gadgets in Vista Sidebar.
In order to permit the addition of as many panels as you want, Desktop Sidebar makes available panel stacking options which allows for the creation of specific groups. This way all stacks sheltering your favorite panels are visible and you can easily expand them (a single click will do) to reach inside to the desired item.
For those more into finances and stock market, a special panel has been built in this sense, retrieving information from Yahoo! Finance website. The downside stems from the fact that going to the online source directly from the panel window will not always work on Vista. On XP, however, everything went just fine at each of our attempts to go to the online source. The great thing though is that you can add symbols from different Stock Exchange markets all over the world.
Newsroom, which is the feed reader of the sidebar, can store as many channels as you deem necessary, all displayed as a slideshow. Sure, you have control over them as moving back and forth from one channel to another is supported. The user gets to set the scroll time for the next headline, time to switch to the next channel, configure the refresh rate. One of the best things about the feed reader is that it supports rules for marking titles containing words of special interest to the user, or behave according to a user-defined pattern (delete, display an alert with custom message, play a sound, start an application, etc.).
Hovering over a headline the user will benefit from a preview window showing the title and the first 14 lines of the news, ending with the link to the full article. Unfortunately in this case too, we have failed to go directly to the source directly from the panel or any link provided by the application. Again, this seems to be restricted only to Vista environment as on XP there has been recorded no such anomaly.
Email checking is another panel you are definitely going to get along with well. If you are running Vista and use Windows Mail, it'll be automatically configured with the current account(s). if no account is present, you will have to configure it. The same is available in the case of Outlook on Windows XP. Actually you can add the mail checker and use the panel with any email client you want. This way you are not limited to the default Microsoft products.
Desktop Sidebar integrates lots of useful panels and can become quite crowded if you add too many of them. Luckily you can stack them up into groups for a better organization and easier handling of the panels. The list of default panels includes mail checker, MS Messenger, Miranda IM as an alternative, Windows Media Player, Slideshow, volume control, Winamp, newsroom, stock panel, weather panel, clock, command line, etc.
Command line comes with multiple functions to be used mostly for online activities such as Google search, or accessing useful locations like dictionaries or entertainment websites. Start menu's Run is also included but unfortunately it does not behave properly as when accessed it opens Desktop Sidebar's installation folder. Windows Calculator also poses some problems when accessed from command line because it refuses to open.
For standing out in the crowd, Desktop Sidebar allows a series of modifications so that it fits perfectly your desktop environment. First of all, you can set it to auto-hide in case you find it intrusive on the desktop and its transparency level can be adjusted with a drag of a slider. As for the skins, 13 of them are at your disposal, covering all sorts of colors and hues, as well as shapes (sure, going online permits downloading more of them). Or, if the default ones are not to your taste, you can use the skin editor and customize them to your aesthetic standards (anything from font, background, selected elements, caption, panels, etc. can be tweaked).
All in all, the application does a wonderful job at sheltering useful services of daily use, fully customizable, integrating them into an unobtrusive sidebar. On Vista, there are several issues which can't be overlooked and which hopefully will be fixed with the future version.
The Good
Desktop Sidebar makes for a very good replacement of Vista sidebar, bringing forward lots of useful apps. Both the sidebar itself as well as each individual panel are extremely easy to configure and manipulate.
It makes available all apps designed to make you stay in contact with your friends and the desired online news.
The Bad
On Vista, there are plenty of issues to be fixed, among which some command lines and accessing the links from the news feed. System performance information is not rendered as it should, as it does not display any information but the total amount of resource usage (this is not broken down into the elements using the resources).
The Truth
On XP, it does a magnificent job and did not create any problems (it is its natural environment). And even on Vista it substituted the native sidebar with great success, but there were some problems with accessing the links in the news feed and some of the command lines did not work properly.
But using it on XP sure gives you the edge of the plain old system allowing faster access to web locations, a permanent supervision of your favorite feeds and system resources. And, above all, it is absolutely free of charge.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
