I love Vista and run it on my primary desktop and laptop computers, but there are a couple of systems, such as the one in the bedroom, that are older and don’t have the hardware resources to run Vista well. XP works fine on them.

One of the main things that I used to miss when I used the XP systems was the Vista sidebar. I am an admitted sidebar/gadget junkie. Then I found the Thooseje sidebar for XP, which gives me most of the functionality of Vista’s sidebar and then some. It comes with gadgets that are similar to those built into Vista, and you can customize it with skins to give it several different looks.

Here’s the desktop of my bedroom computer running XP with the Thooseje sidebar:

Windows XP with the Thooseje sidebar

The XP sidebar actually gives you more flexibility than its Vista counterpart. For instance, you can move it to a different location instead of having it docked at one side, as shown here:

You can move the sidebar away from the screen edge if you want

So if you like Vista but have some XP systems that you’d like to make more Vista-like, or if you prefer XP but just like the Vista sidebar, give Thooseje a try. It’s a free download at http://www.thoosje.com/sidebar.html 

 

deb@shinder.net