Okay Jim, i'm giving you

The Uppers:

... Use Speedfan (4.29 Beta presently). On my systray long as its been existing. Alfredo, living not so far from here, in strictest sense 'down the road' (one thats known to follow a route at least 2500 years old going all the way to a town that got documented history of 3500 years). He does a fine job on developing this and keeping it current for all boards and cpu's coming on the market and enhancing it. He takes donations! Keeps my CPU at rockfest 60C and HD at 45C.

... Use DU meter, even bought it 6 years ago, but run it strictly minimised to tray.....colour tells me if up or down traffic or both...

The Downers:

...but really, whats the point with a unrestricted 20meg ADSL into the internet? So just now uninstalled it and revived the standard network connection icon of Windows. Tells me i got a 100mb wifi link to the router in ottima forma.

... Taskmanager always sitting in my systray, tells me a few essential things like, cpu down or up.... a build in, not-hidden Windows feature...

... Else relying on Antivir and Soft+Router Firewall and occasional adware/bot scan......the latter thanks Threadmaster running at very low priority and cycle alotment.

The Uppers (Reprise)

...screen real estate 16x16 pixels each.... hovering with the rodent a bit more at my finger tips.

...Average run of BOINC/CPU, 93,6% of total CPU ticks..

12% for widgets in on dual/quad fast machine is not alot, on a medium machine 1 core, it counts, on a lower spec machine it can mean hours added to a crunch!

Finesse gets lost in translation on any international forum.....most here dont speak with American English tongue....

....in cheek!

Here is a widget review:

http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/Yahoo-Widget-Engine-Review-14699.shtml

Some widgets are interesting, neat ones must be hunted for, and more than a few puts some stress on your computer. I'll keep crunching for now.

Baywhale...if u look in your Taskmanager u see.....Taskmgr.exe. Create a shortcut, put in options 'minimize on startup'. Select the option in Taskmanager to minimize to tray and you should be in TaskManager heaven...(never tried it, as when i start i want to start fastest...only allow BOINC/UD for when there is this occasional autoboot...a undocumented MSFT feature, which few know how to control ).