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You look at the desktop a lot? I can barely even remember what my desktop background is. I see it for about 10 seconds after a very rare reboot, while I'm waiting for various maximized applications to start.

My desktop is blue. (The Win2k blue, to be precise)

I use it as a massive more-advanced start menu, thanks to tools like this and this.

To get to it to launch, find, or look at something, I use WinKey+D

At my work we use a program called samurize: http://samurize.com/ It can monitor WMI out of the box, and there is an SNMP plugin that you can use also. Its hard to work sometimes, and its time consuming also, but it works and since you design the graphics you can make it as pretty as you want

http://www.samurize.com/modules/news/

Many plugins available and can be run as a screen saver. It is a VERY VERY flexible system for visualizing monitoring point data. Supports WMI built in, command ling, scripting, plugins for SNMP you name it.

the Plain karamba was inspired by http://www.samurize.com/. I wonder who originally came up with the concept, but then again who cares..

If you have some systems running Windows I highly reccomend hooking up a few displays with Samurize. It's what all the case modders use to display system data on auxilary screens and does some absolutely beautiful things with your data.

http://www.samurize.com/

Other players are KlipFolio, Yahoo Widgets (Konfabulator), and Samurize.

KlipFolio and Yahoo use a JavaScript runtime to let developers quickly build Klips/Widgets. Google and Saumrize use a C++/DLL system for building modules.

Anyone have experience will some of the above consumer dashboards and would like to share their thoughts?

Regards,... Fred

Samurize (this site appears to be down, a german version of the site is up at samurize.org)can be manipulated to do that, you just have to find the right plug-ins and create your own configuration, which isn't very difficult, once you get the hang of it.

Exposé

They've been bitching they had this for a while... Hit Windows-Key-D, OHMYGOD, SHOW DESKTOP! Some people have it in the Quick Launch Bar.

Rendezvous

UPnP.

Dashboard

DesktopX? Samurize? Konfabulator? Granted, they're not in Windows default yet, but they're certainly available, and at least one even predates Mac OS X.

Tabbed Browsing in IE out of box

Just wait 'till Longhorn! We'll show those Mac Apologists who-has-what-first :P!

I'm surprised you didn't mention Avalon/Quartz Extreme...

Don't worry about this
or this
or even this
or this
hmm, or this

There's nothing "Mac OS exclusive" about widgets. Apple didn't do them first, just like they didn't do alpha blended shadows, app skinning, a dock, etc... first. But, for some reason, Apple users like to attribute all sorts of misplaced creative distinction to the folks in Cupertino.

That would be direct competition to Samurize...

I don't know about you guys, but there already is an excellent utility for system-monitoring on Windows, it's called Samurize.

It's totally configurable and can be made to be a lot of eye-candy as well. Also it can be extended with scripts and plugins for everything from weather to television listings.

My first thought is that there's something wrong with the way you work, and that you you haven't figured out how to organize your Start menu. Assuming that's not the case though... :)

I've had some fun reconfiguring my Windows desktop using using Samurize. It won't give you a 3D interface or a voice commands or any of that, but it does allow you to provide links to your important applications in a different way. For the true geek, it also allows the embedding of various graphs and system monitors.

Numerous screenshots are available on the site, but they may not all be work-appropriate, so browse wisely (the main page is perfectly safe).

well im not a big proponent of toolbars, I would rather embed stuff directly into my desktop, that way it doesn't actively take up screen space...i understand that there may be stuff like autohide, but i would rather not have it pop up at inopportune times. Here is a sample of what can be done w/ embedding.

I thought Karamba was a clone of the Windows program Samurize.

Information - What is Samurize?

Short description:
Samurize is the successor to the quite popular program CureInfo. It is a system monitoring utility with some pretty awesome configuration power. The configuration program is separated from the client for minimal memory usage. For the moment Samurize is in beta state. This means: Bugs can and does exist, all optimitions have not yet been done.

The program it self displays almost any kind of information right on your desktop/taskbar and homepage (server/taskbar version is in production).

So, I guess it displays stuff. *sigh* I doubt I'll dig further as the video requirement is probably out of my range "Geforce 1 or better (needed to for hardware supported per pixel alpha blending)".