Microsoft Windows 7 Tutorials
User Experience / Gadgets
Subtitles of the Movie (Microsoft Windows 7 / User Experience / Gadgets)
Now let's talk about Gadgets, now Gadgets are these somewhat irritating things that you see on the right side and when I say irritating they can drive you nuts and it's very easy to kind of clog your Desktop with these things. But there's some really cool things you can get out there. You'll notice that I've got a Clock here and I also have a variation, a couple of different styles of these little meters. This one showing you that my CPU is at about 18 percent, 17 percent right there. My RAM if you could see this a little better is around 36 percent. Then I've got a little different one up here and this one is actually showing me my Wireless Network strength and the name of the Network I'm connected to. A clock, my RAM, my CPU and then I can go out and look at some tools and notice I can check pings, whois, I can do IP look-ups and so forth and I can come back. So you can see there's some pretty cool functionalities. Now, I can click over and drag this thing off and set it anywhere that I would like to, OK? And I can go and you'll notice a little Wrench and there is some Options that you can set and you know a lot of things that you can do, OK? And I can check for updates, if there's updates on that. Well I'll Cancel that and then anytime I want to I can just drag it back and dock it back over here, OK? Now notice how these things are getting lighter. If I just mouse over any one of these things and right click I can set the Opacity. So a 100 percent it never gets dimmer, if I set the Opacity to 20 percent notice that it almost fades away and when I mouse over it, it gets dark. So that's a matter of personal taste. Now how busy do you want to get with these things? Well right click anywhere on the Desktop and you will notice Gadgets. Well if you left click on that there are a number of Gadgets that are preloaded, OK? And for these Gadgets if you want to use them all you have to do is just kind of drag it over. Well notice, let's find one here, page 2, let's say a weather one. I'll just drag it, I just double click it actually and there it is, OK? And I can close this and then I can right click it, notice I can set the size, we can make it the large size and it gives us a little information, then I can right click and set that Opacity down to where it is not so obvious and then when I mouse over it, it gets up there, OK? Then I can click this and I can set my Location, OK? And I can tell it to search for my Location and let's see if it'll find me. Searching for Nashville, Tennessee, it sounds found, OK? And so notice today it's 66 mostly cloudy in Nashville, Tennessee. Alright, so very easy, some cool things to do here and I can make it smaller or I can come over and these things have different functionalities where I can just close it. Now, if I want to get really cool I can go to Gadgets and I can click get more Gadgets online, OK? And you can grab some- notice here's Bing, Search, Sideplayer, Vista Calculator and let's just kind of show you this one. If you want a Calculator out there on the Desktop, click on Download, you will see it here. They will tell you, you'll see some reviews on it and so forth and then I can just come over here and click the Download Button OK, and it's saying this is an unverified submission, so be careful with these. I'll install here since we're in class and I'll just hit OK, or Open and this will install that and there it is and so notice now you see that I have the calculator, I'll set the Opacity to 20 percent and whenever I need a calculator I can just jump over here and hit it and I can be calculated, OK? Notice I can go set some of my Options, I can show results in degrees, radians, so I can do all kind of cool stuff and if I don't like it I can just turn it off, OK? So that's Gadgets now you can build your own Gadgets and sell them out there, you can do all kind of stuff. But there's one other thing that you need to see about Gadgets and that is that I can right click and tell this thing to always be on top. Now if I do that and then I open something, notice this thing is always on top and its probably going to irritate me and so I can turn that thing Off OK, and now it'll go away. Now there's another trick here and that is if I hold down the Windows Key, that's the picture of the little Windows Flag and hit G it will bring these to the top OK, just for that period of time and I can see all my Gadgets and I can see what's going on and then anytime I click they'll go away and they go back to the back again so that's Windows - G, will make them show up and then I can mouse over them and use them and then click and they'll go away, OK? Now, a lot of stuff here just for Gadgets, some people love these things, some people hate them. Totally up to you, again keep in mind you can click and drag these things out. You can have them all over your Desktop, just like this and you can set that Opacity down and you can get to them whenever you want to. And so then whenever you're working Windows-G will pull them up and you can check the time or whatever you want and then you can just simply click and they go away, OK? So that's Gadgets, figure out what you like, put them up there, you can spend quite a few hours out there looking around and find some really cool Gadgets to do some cool stuff. There's a Pandora one so you can get Internet Radio, really cool stuff so just go play with Gadgets.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Microsoft Windows 7 |
| Author: | Mark Long |
| SKU: | 34064 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-86-6 |
| Release Date: | 2009-12-10 |
| Duration: | 7 hrs / 74 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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