Personally, I don’t see much value in Windows Gadgets, but there are many Windows Vista and 7 fans that do make use of them on regular basis. The problem is that gadget users are about to find that Microsoft is ripping them away with a new security patch. You might be curious about what kind of possible security risk a widget on your desktop could have, but apparently they are bad news. Recently, MS made the realization that desktop widgets have a web-based code that has flaws that could easily allow gadgets that look normal to be malicious spyware. Because of the way gadgets work, these things could use backdoors that would make it much easier to affect computers negatively than other methods.

As a result of this discovery, Microsoft has created a new patch that disables the gadgets entirely, though its not entirely clear whether or not the company has intentions to fix the security problems and put gadgets back, or if they decided to just ax them permanently. Just curious, any Windows users here that actually make use of these gadgets? If so, how do you feel about MS just ripping them away? I understand security is important, but surely there has to be other ways to fix these vulnerabilities.

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