Microsoft® Windows 7 In Depth

7. Gadgets and Other Supplied Accessories

Using Gadgets

As mentioned in Chapter 1, “Introducing Windows 7,” that old monster dubbed Active Desktop back in the Windows 98 days silently slipped away into oblivion and was dropped by Microsoft after we all realized that even the fastest computer could be brought to its knees when a few Active Desktop items were running. Add a weather map, stock sticker, and headline news ticker, and mysteriously, your computer would either lock up entirely or run so slowly that it might as well have. After you rebooted, you’d see a message such as this:

Internet Explorer has experienced a problem or error. As a precaution, your Active Desktop has temporarily been turned off. To start the Active Desktop again, use ...