Do desktop gagdets waste a lot of resources?

I have never used them before but I kind of like them--but i always thought they caused a lot of slow down. Is this true or are they fine?

 

Really depends on which gadget, you can monitor the RAM and CPU usage in Task Manager.

Back in Vista's sidebar, i only had 4-5 gadgets installed and it ate up quite a bit of resources. I think it was mainly cause of the System monitoring gadgets i installed.

 

i never use it. its fancy and all but its sort of pointless for my to watch the neddle go up and down.

thanks

 

I wouldn't over do it but most gadgets don't use much of your system resources.

Really you cant "waste" resources. Un-used resources are the wasted ones so the more you use the better That is unless you use up so much that it slows down something else.

One of the best gadgets there is IMO is a resource monitor to show you ram use and cpu use % so if something was using up a lot of the system you would see it in real time.

 

Yes its true unused resources is a waste but keep in mind notebooks have a limited power supply while on battery. So the more resources you use, the more drain it will put on the battery.

Other than that most notebooks these days are fast enough to run gadgets in the background without any performance interference.

 

Windows 7 gadget was greatly improved over Vista sidebar system.
But resources depends on the gadget. If it's well design, it should not take a lot of resources or CPU power.