To me, the sidebar was an odd feature of Vista. It reminded of the old Office toolbar(which I never used), yet as time passes it is starting to grow on me mainly to the useful gadgets people build for it. One such useful gadget is the Control System gadget that allows you to shut down(including all iterations:standby,hibernate etc.) your system from the sidebar: Download it here.
When the Vista sidebar was released, I was a bit skeptical. It reminded me of the old Office toolbar(ok,but not a big hit-at least not with me). Lately I have started to view it in a different light-you can actually have quite a useful gadget attached to it,you can build a gadget that will provide directory information for your companies employee or direct access to your IT staff. In addition to that two new gadgets were published on the Outlook teams blog: appointments and tasks. Take a look at...