Is windows sidebar a bloat?

Lately, i've been concerned with my boot time. I have quite a few programs on loading, so i'm really trying to shave off the unecessaries. Is it me, or does windows sidebar take FOREVER to load right after a reboot?

Thanks,
yehrulz

 

Not just you... I have noticed it as well and I am seriously thinking of turning it (windows sidebar) off and finding something else to use.

 

I've never really used it, when i did, it did slow the startup, i wouldn't say it was a dramatic change but definatly noticable. I guess one of the reasons, and this is just a guess, for it to be slow would be the gadgets collecting information for example, news weather etc and whatever else the other gadgets need to run collect.

 

removed on day 1

 

well, i just see a black bar at the sidebar. Then it takes a while for the gadgets to load. So bad phrasing, i see the bar, the gadgets take such a long time to load though, even the default ones! Any others?

 

I had Vista for awhile on my desktop. Specs:

Asus M2N32-sli Premium, 6400+ BE OC'd to 3.45ghz, 4gb of ddr2-1000, 2x evga 8800GT SC's.

I ended up killing most of the neat stuff about Vista. Just wasted resources, slowed down loading theOS, games, etc. Vista is pretty, I'll give you that. But pretty isn't what I want. I want stable, reliable, functionable, and affordable. Vista is none of those yet. Maybe by the time Windows 7 gets here they will have released enough Service Packs to make it keepable. The MS timeline doesn't seem to share that optimistic view though.

 

It is pretty much instant for me

 

i have a hp dv2000, 2 gb, 1.8 x2 AMD. Some integrated 8400 card ithink. Is that a problem?

 

You oughta get at least another GB of ram for it.

 

Vista flies on my Acer 5315. 34 second boot time without the sidebar. roughly about 45 seconds with it. I keep it turned off...but sometimes its nice to have

gaming?....not so much. but everything else is rock sol

 

its not really the ram that slows the boot time but a slow hard drive.

 

k thanks. I disabled it and booted. BAM, that was fast. The HD light stopped after maybe 15 seconds after logging in. I think might turn it off completely. Bu i do miss the cpu gadget

 

You can still have the gadgets without having the side bar.

 

Use rainmeter or any other monitoring tool

 

My sidebar is almost instant. It really depends on how much you have as far as gadgets go. I currently use only a CPU speedometer and weather.

What is slow is my touchpad drivers. Takes forever before the touchpad drivers load, at the point where I am already surfing the internet but I have no scrolling and the speed is slower.

Greg

 

Vista takes longer to load for me than XP home. I'm running dual OS and vista takes a lot longer to load. Most of my apps are all installed on XP so vista basically just a clean install. But it still takes longer to load for some reason than XP.

 

I never used it...
I like having all of my desktop and when I did use a sidebar I used google desktop over Windows sidebar anyways.

 

That's normal. Vista does take longer to load than XP on the same hardware.

That has been true of every new release of Windows, it's not a new phenomenon to XP -> Vista.

Greg

 

..??@ You can still have the gadgets without having the side bar.

 

btw, what hard drive speed is now the average mainstream? i think i have 5400 rpm

plus my question above

 

Co-sign.

Actually, removed it with vLite before I even could pop in the install disc. Removed on day 0!

 

i never really understood what was so good about gadgets anyway. The clock is dumb i already have a clock that's digital. a cpu reader? i'll know my cpu usage is too high if my computer begins to lag which doesn't happen because a core 2 duo with 4 gigs of ram runs fine without being monitored. The only gadgets i thought were closest to being useful was the weather and the MLB scoreboard.

 

Gadgets are sometimes useful, often eye candy, and sometimes just entertaining or fun. They are only bloat if they interfere in some way with something else you value higher.

I do not have Vista SideBar active right now, but have had Weather and Analog Clock (I dislike digital clocks) gadgets in the past.

 

+1 for the clock. LOL!

I had it for a while, but then got rid of it... haven't missed it too.

 

..??@ You can still have the gadgets without having the side bar. refering to a previous poster on page 2

 

No, you can't. You can hide the sidebar and remove the gadgets from it, but the application is still running, no matter how you have the gadgets setup.

Greg

 

I found it to be slowing my system down, so I turned it off.

 

Actually you can have Opera gadgets, too.

 

and Widgets

 

sucks. Used, got sick of it, and happy now with Yahoo! widgets. Google sidebar just sucks, as well. cheers

 

Gadgets, Widgets, Gidgets, Midgets, whatever.

 

Windows Sidebar make start up a little longer when turn on, but I like it. Usually, start up only once a day, right? Not a deal breaker for me.

 

Yup... having the clock in the sidebar is pretty redundant. I only have a CPU usage monitor even though I don't even need that.

 

It might take that long because the Windows Sidebar service is set to Automatic (delayed). Hopefully I haven't repeated somebody's suggestion.

 

I actually like the sidebar and am a bit dissapointed that they didn't even leave us the option of reenabling it in Windows 7. I like the gadgets off to the side so I have a cleaner desktop.

 

Pretty much don't use it.

 

i dont use it at all, uses too much ram for me and anything the sidebar can do you can beat theres an app out there that can do it better and use less resources

 

You got that right.

 

iuse rainmeter and Rainlender2 for everything that the sidebar could do rainlender2 uses 10mb while tainmeter uses 4mb and has battery, ram, cpu, cpu1 and cpu2 - i hope to get something very similar but that shows my Q6600

 

I agree with you
Windows Sidebar on the right screen make desktop looks more clean, I think we can move gadgets on Windows 7 and arrange to the right like Vista, right?

 

Good news for us, I read that gadgets will start off on the right portion of the desktop, like they have always been, but the Sidebar "layer" underneath is gone

 

That's cool, since I didn't like the layer at all, but I didn't mind a few cool gadgets there. However, as mentioned, there are always much better free/open source alternatives! :yes:

 

Seriously.....how do you do this? Mine takes a minute and a half at least.

 

I have pretty fast boot time for Vista as well. You can always check out this thread for performance tips. :GEEK:

 

That is a good news. Anyway, may I ask you what gadgets you currently use now? I plan to add more to my sidebar.. Thanks buddy

 

Funny thing just the other day- I was looking through my memory usage and realized that Rainlendar2 + Rainmeter + ObjectDock were barely hitting 17mb of usage. I remember the Vista Sidebar used to hit at the very least 25MB and if memory serves me right, there was another process running for it at 15MB.

Basically, 17MB for 3 far more useful and superior programs compared to 40MB for 1 POS.

Conclude what you will.

 

no problem, I use Multi Meter for CPU and RAM status, Sushi's Drive Info for HD capacity status, Wireless Network, Weather Underground's Weather Gadget, the default Notes Gadget and a Digital Clock.

Here's a picture of them-
By rickhamilton620 at 2008-10-30