Despite my previous experiences with Yahoo! Widgets (previously Konfabulator), for some reason I’ve had Yahoo! Widgets running on my desktop for the last couple of months.
I don’t know why though, it’s awful bloatware, each widget taking about 4-10Mb of memory. With a desktop full of widgets clearly slowing the boot-up of Windows to a ready-state.
Further, the widgets were a distraction – a TV guide, webcams, referrers to Toongabbie Anglican Church (via a widget for Mint).
The only really useful widget was a volume control that was partially transparent, floating on the top of other windows giving me a quick volume and mute control.
Despite that one useful widget, I again uninstalled Yahoo! Widgets – goodbye… but then, I found I missed the volume control.
I found a similar but ugly alternative, ZVolume Pro – with a cost it wasn’t worth the ugliness.
Then I found Volumouse. Volumouse (Win XP) turns your mouse’s scroll wheel into the volume control. It’s highly configurable, but I have simply set it that when I hold shift and roll the scroll wheel, the volume goes up and down. And it’s free.
Update: See follow-up post In search of a better volume control – part 2
Simon – nice tip – spent most of the morning trying to solve this… thanks!