Windows Vista Sidebar – Why you should disable it?

Sidebar in Windows Vista is the wonderful feature. It’s transparent color system and nice colorful gadgets, obviously very useful gadgets such as CPU meter, currency converter, news, stocks and weather updates from MSN are good in Windows vista side bar.

There are so many windows vista sidebar gadgets you can get from Microsoft and other third party software vendors. Latest gadgets for windows vista side bar makes life easy and keep you update all on your desktop.

Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets download from Microsoft.

Windows Vista Sidebar Options

Windows Vista sidebar options can be modified in ‘Windows Sidebar Properties’ in Control panel classic view, or just right click on sidebar and go to properties.

All options on windows vista sidebar properties are very clear and not required to explain.

You can close the sidebar temporarily by right click on sidebar and select ‘Close Sidebar’. To open again, right click on sidebar icon in notification area and press open.

Windows Vista Sidebar – Why you should disable it?

It depends whether you are an ‘Appearance Lover’ or ‘Performance Lover’ in Windows Vista. One of my friend called and said that his windows vista is running with full memory usage when he is not doing anything. When I asked “How do you know it?” he replied that he downloaded two additions gadgets to monitor computer Physical memory with built in CPU meter in sidebar, so totally three gadgets to monitor RAM and some more gadgets on his Windows Vista. Now I understood the problem and I asked him to check the memory performance in task manager. He is not happy there also and said task manger also showing like 100% full. I told him to close the Vista sidebar and monitor the performance in task manger. The result is unbelievable! Memory usage dropped from 100% to 70%. He was amazed by the result since he was breaking his head for this for long time.

You can guess now, why I’m writing this post on Windows Vista Sidebar – Why you should disable it?

1) Windows Vista Sidebar consumes more computer memory than what you think.

2) Windows Vista Sidebar consumes fair enough network traffic (including internet) to update its services.

3) Once its settings set to ‘Always on top of other windows’, you will be struggling to access any files or folders behind the sidebar.

These are main reasons to consider why you should disable windows vista sidebar.

Vista Sidebar Memory Usage.

Below first task manger performance screen shot taken when sidebar is closed and none of the programs or files opened.

This second task manger performance screen take when sidebar is opened with four built-in gadgets and none of the programs or files opened.

You can see windows vista sidebar process almost takes equaling memory to exprorer.exe. But sidebar is not that much important in a windows as explorer. Then why we need to waste that much memory for some fancy stuff.

I do not ask you to disable the windows vista sidebar, but I’m pretty sure you will feel the performance improvement in your computer after you disable the sidebar.