Well, it came out today, the long awaited Konfabulator for Windows. Everyone here knows I'm a widget junkie, and I've been waiting to see what Konfabulator brought to the table.
The answer: Not bloody much.
Here's my first, and very important issue with Konfabulator... it's bloatware. I run an
AthlonXP 3200+ Barton with 1Gb DDR400, RAID 1 sata 8mb cache (identical
liquid bearing drives), Radeon 256mb 9700 Pro and KONFABULATOR IS SLUGGISH. Thats right, it's slow to open a widget, and the resource useage is out of this world.
Let's compare...
The Weather (Konfabulator): 7,968k
Systats FabWeather (AveDesk): 800k
Core Weather (DesktopX): 616k
Analog Clock (Konfabulator): 8,540k
Analog Clock (AveDesk): 453k
Core Clock (DesktopX): 2,388k
Interesting to note here that Corew clock offers resizing, coloration and other features not included in the AveDesk and Konfabulator clocks)
iTunes Controller (Konfabulator): 9,792k
iTunes Controller (AveDesk): 1,556k
iTunes Controller (DesktopX): 2,332k
Overall, my combo use of DesktopX and Avedesk (9 items running) barely breaks 5,000k, while use of a
single Konfabulator Widget runs on average double that. Ouch.
That is not to say that all is good in AveDesk or DesktopX land (sorry that I'm leaving Kapsules out of this - a new release hit today and I want to go through it completely before using it in a comparison). Here's my evaluation of each application, as it stands today:
AveDesk:
Light on resources
Good collection of Desktop Objects.
Basic use for the end user, not as flexible as DesktopX.
DesktopX:
Light on resources
Great collection of widgets from a user standpoint.
Most widgets are ugly (Stardock is fixing this).
Difficult to script if you dont know how to script
Outdated interface (Stardock is fixing this).
Fantastic stand alone ability of widgets. Makes the app invaluable.
Konfabulator:
Heavy on resources. OMG, someone smack Arlo for me.
Brings very little new to the table.
Beautiful widgets.
Lack of configuration options.
Widgets arent easily controlled.
So thats it for a first glance. This area of customization is always moving forward, always in flux. always improving. Stardock has just put up a huge road map on whats planned for the DesktopX/ IconX revamp. Some of their ideas Ive been asking for for years, so Im excited about it.
AveDesk 1.2 is in the works... screens Ive seen (and the betas Ive run) are clean and smooth. The ability to save themes is great, and while its not the same caliber of DesktopX, I still think its heads above Konfabulator.