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Hate widgets on PC Love them on android

Snow_Fox

Snow_Fox

Android Expert
I may be the only one out there like this.. but, I absolutely hate desktop widgets. I find them almost completely useless.

Why would I want to see what the weather is sitting on my desktop/laptop. If I am at a desktop.. I don't need to worry about weather with a roof over my head..If I'm on a laptop.. I'm still most likely inside already and taking time to set up widgets ect.

On the other hand.. it would/will be nice to just look at my phone and get an idea of what the weather is first thing in the morning.. "gunna rain? need a jacket?"

Even email widgets on desktop seem a bit backwards.. "well I am on my browser of choice with 8 tabs open anyway.. let me use up more system resources with a widget... instead of just habitually opening my email account like I've done for years anyway"..

Its funny really.. I've always found widgets to be so useless for my computer.. but, they seem to make sense on phone's.
 
I can appreciate how you feel...

Personally I think widgets would be better accepted on phones because of the smaller form factor. With so little screen real estate it makes more sense to put multiple widgets on a screen than large browser and application windows that are more tedius to flip through.

For me there are still a few Windoze widgets that I find useful...
 
I like the widgets on the phone mostly because the phone isn't something I stare at for hours on end like a computer can be. I pick the phone up, check it, and put it down. Widgets make it quick and easy to know if there's something worth reading/seeing/hearing/ect...
 
It's true. One of the first things I did when I got my PC was to remove the Vista sidebar thing. I actually have no idea how it works and pretty much forgot it was even a feature 'til this reminded me.
 
i completely agree, the only one i use monitors my ram, cpu, and temp. i think all others are pretty useless
 
This is one of the things were I find the Mac OS approach to widgets a little better. they put them all under a single button in your task bar, and they stay out of the way unless you wish to see them. just press the button and all your widgets appear. Kind of nice.

On the other hand, some of the linux distros take a slightly different approach. For example, KDE uses an approach that is a bit of a blend between the mac and windows approach, whereas Gnome uses a conept called desklets, in which they allow you to add tiny discrete widgets into your task bar, which give you minimal info unless you activate them, at which point they provide full info. in either case, you can compbine the native approach with app dock based widgets and place them in a dedicated spot. For example, I use a to do list which I always keep open, but run it on a secondary desktop. When I need to see it, i just rotate my desktop. look at my list or update it, and then rotate back. I could, If I wanted to, add a desktop dedicated exclusively to widgets and never be bothered by them unless I wanted to work on that desktop.

With today's multi-core systems with super high ram, even lots of widgets shouldn't place much of a load on your system.
 
Same here, widgets on my PC have always annoyed me to no end. never even kept the system resources etc.. on my phone I love them!
 
Hm.

I use individual programs.. but, then again I monitor my stuff enough that I would just rather have individual programs run.

IE core temps if I want to monitor how hot my comp gets when..

CPU-z if I just want to know the max and don't care about average.

I really don't see any point in running those 24/7..

And while even dual cores with enough ram are amply equipped to handle the widgets...

I think there is a real lack of really useful widgets for desktop.. I don't want to "configure" anything for email.. and for most things I could just use a desktop shortcut.. perfect example being gmail..

now on phone's it seems just leaps and bounds more useful.. I do admit.. if I could sync a google calendar from my phone and have results plugged into a calendar on my desktop.. that would be a little more useful.. Especially if that calendar could be updated for other peoples events and such..

I update my phone.. it automatically distributes my schedule to friends/families calendars so we can see when we have time to hang out/schedule a dr appointment or w/e..
 
All of this combined with the fact that widgets on the computer are just flat fugly most of the time... eye candy plays a decent part in my widget choices.
 
the main point against pc widgets for me is that i'm never viewing my desktop (where the widgets would be) - i've always got irc and winamp on top
 
And really, when you are at your computer, how often do you look at your desktop? I always have some program running full screen, like MS Office, Chrome, etc.

On my phone I look at the home screen constantly. To check the time, weather, etc.

I do like the concept of widgets in the taskbar though
 
very good point about desktop... if I have a game running, a temp/usage monitor is useless as a widget..
 
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