I know I have said this before today z0mbie, but I have to agree with you 100% here. I stopped by Neowin this morning and saw the thread in which it was being discussed. So many of the comments were virtual orgasms about Konfabulator. So I downloaded it and tried it. It turned on and 6 widgets popped up. Not a single one was something I hadn't seen before in perhaps different, but equally well done visual presentation. Then for fun I opened Task Manager and totalled somewhere over 60-70 megs of RAM. Excuse me? I can run an entire Desktop X theme (like one of gef's) and add in additional widgets (imported as objects) and not have the RAM usage jump above 30-35 megs.

Sure, if this was your first exposure to widget apps I can see the excitement. But knowing and having played with what else is out there, well, I found Konfab sorely wanting.

Zombie I cant belive you left me out of this tussle! Good review. I agree with all of it. Although, I am completely biased. While I hate shamelessly plugging Kapsules, I'm working on some really really good additions to it.

Where is the DesktopX roadmap posted?

Andrew, do I ever forget you?

naw baby. mwahahaha

Kapsules update:
Andrew thought I forgot about him....

The Weather (Konfabulator): 7,968k
Systats FabWeather (AveDesk): 800k
Core Weather (DesktopX): 616k
Kap Weather (Kapsules): 5,770

Analog Clock (Konfabulator): 8,540k
Analog Clock (AveDesk): 453k
Core Clock (DesktopX): 2,388k
World Clock (Kapsules): 3,222k

iTunes Controller (Konfabulator): 9,792k
iTunes Controller (AveDesk): 1,556k
iTunes Controller (DesktopX): 2,332k
iTunes Controller (Kapsules): 2,537k

So, Kapsules is a little tougher on memory useage than DesktopX or AveDesk. It's still alot less than Konfabulator. Here's the Kapsules breakdown:

Kapsules
Moderate resource use.
Quality widgets.
Limited widgets 1/25th of the DesktopX library.
Easier to skin than DesktopX.
Difficult to script (if you don;t know how to script).

Overall, I like Kapsules, DesktopX and AveDesk. AveDesk spends more time as my base widget system for the following reasons:
It's easy to label and configure every object.
Every object is super easy to skin.
Low resources (not as low as DesktopX overall, Stardock wins the day here).
It keeps object settings and positions.

Two of those reasons are critical: Object position and labelling. Konfabulator and Kapsules don't allow a user to label objects. This is not because of the applications, but how the creators of each object scripted those objects. AveDesk and DesktopX have a uniform object labelling system. When cloning objects such as multiple FTP drops ( I use two that are critical) knowing which object is which is a must.
DesktopX loses points because objects jump around between reboots. An FTP drive can jump across the screen even when its position is locked down, as can any other object. The few DesktopX objects I do use are fantastic, and were obviously made with love and care. DesktopX has been getting alot of love and care lately, and as it's my first widget system its good to see this - I'll be watching EVERY DesktopX update closely to see where they take this.

Konfabulator is the big loser. It's very bloated, doesn't offer anything for $25 I cant get from the freeware version of DesktopX, Kapsules or AveDesk. Dont misunderstand me, I'm happy to pay for quality. Stardock has received much zombie pimping in the past, as has AveDesk. Kapsules has made a few very big leaps forward these past few months, and it's exciting to watch someone as cool as Andrew deliver goods to the masses - he's got that same drive that Brad Wardell and AndreasV have... that drive that keeps us customization junkies ripe with new goodies.
I think Arlo has that same light in his eye, we'll just have to wait and see.

Here's a little something interesting... theres a fix for Konfabulator memory useage, bringing it inline with the other Widget apps.

Powder Cleaner 2.0
This actually decreases the memory useage of everything, quite a nice little application.

Been using konfabulator for just a little over year on my Power Mac (1.8 single), so I thought what the. . .and downloaded it for my pc (intel 3.01 overclocked to 3.9) with 2 g of memory. And, guess what boys and girls; it slowed it down (just a bit, but a enough to notice).
However, the main problem was it didn't do anything that the widgets designed for DeskX couldn't do. Since I have already invested money into StarDock products there was no reason to use or pay for Konfabulator for my pc.
As to Kapsules when attempting to load it up it failed to load because .Net wasn't installed on my computer. Hence, as Konfabulator it went bye-bye.
In my humble (so humble) opinion what is the use of having three or more programs that do the same thing. Besides DeskX widgets can be run as stand alone app's. Good example (one I really like and have open on startup) is "Picture Framer" by Martin Conroy (great widget).

Pam

After thought:

I use Objectdock plus on my pc, and one of the tabs is a WIDGETS tab (DeskX style). What is nice about having the Widgets tab is the abililty to use widgets when needed without always having them on the desktop.

Pam

Beware of Powdercleaner, dead zombie.

You basically trade memory for CPU and it's not a good trade off if it's trying to make up lots of RAM.  What it does is that it rapidly swaps stuff to disk when it's not needed right then.  So you'll hear your hard drive crunch a lot more and your CPU use go up as a result.

 

Yeah Powdercleaner is the devil to system performance. Unless all you do is browse the web and chat on irc.

"Interesting to note here that Corew clock offers resizing, coloration and other features not included in the AveDesk and Konfabulator clocks)"

Ahem... one of the core features of avedesk is to independantly resize and colorize every desklet.

True, a feature I have so taken for granted that I forgot all about. Perhaps it was the resize tab on Core Clock that made me crazy... good to hear from you AndreasV. I didn't realize we had all the widget guys here!

Andreas, you can do that with all DesktopX objects too. What the core clock does differnetly is that it actually has a gripper on it to resize it.

A few things about Konfabulator have grown on me. Things that attribute to the quality and creativity of Konfabulator widget makers. First is the widget fnorder. Its a widget that delivers messages from "your secret masters" Things like "The button from the North Pole will go to Dallas" and A chicken from Mars tickles the siamese kitten". Things you'll only understand if you work for the Secret Masters.

The other widget I like is "Where is it". Pretty much the ultimate search tool, it allows you to easily search from Google, Amazon, Lycos, altavista, msn, overture, ebay, yahoo!, & of course the Konfabulator widget gallery. Top work, powerful tool.

So I'm changing the name of the article to "Konfabulator for Windows: Worth the hype?". Because with these two widgets its not a huge dissappointment, just not everything Ive seen advertised.