Konfabulator for Windows: Worth the hype?

Published on November 8, 2004 By d3adz0mbie In OS Customization

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Outdated interface (Stardock is fixing this).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.

Comments (Page 2)

Frogboy

on Nov 11, 2004

Yea, the polish of the widgets is the impressive thing.

The whole thing reminds me a bit of the console wars. Some consoles have more horse power than others but in the end it's about the games.

DesktopX widgets have lagged behind (until recently) Konfabulator in the polish category. Stardock's attitude has always been "throw the technology out there and let the skinners do their thang.."

Konfabulator's authors left nothing to chance, they released it along with a dozen or so really outstanding widgets.

Things are changing for DesktopX though. I honestly think there's no Konfabulator widget that can compete with the new Gadget Media Player: Link

SuiteLife

on Dec 08, 2004

Ed Voas stated this on Konfabulator's forum on Nov 9th...
(He is one of the lead developers of the Windows Version of Konfabulator)

"In fact, we are right in line with Desktop X. I verified this this AM. For example, I looked at the Desktop X digital clock widget, and it's private memory was 4MB. A more complex K widget, The Weather, took about 4.5MB of private memory. Private memory is the memory actually allocated by the process. The number you see in Task Manager is the amount of total memory used in RAM, but this is not memory that is necessarily used. This memory includes shared libraries, etc. that are linked and loaded on app launch. Typically, this amount of space is not stuff that's actually used more than once (bringup) if at all. When the OS needs more memory, it will page this memory out and reduce the working set of the application to just what's needed. But if you have a bunch of free RAM, it won't get paged. But you don't NEED it to get paged.

So for example, that same Desktop X widget showed me:

4MB private memory
2MB working set (this is what you'll see in Task Manager)
10MB max working set

Note that last number. Considering our smaller widgets take around that or less (larger ones take more - and the more images, then certainly that's more ram), you'll note that we are not that far off. The Weather showed:

4.5M private
12 MB working
12 MB max

The difference here is that we aren't calling anything to force us to page out. When I do that, I get:

4.5 MB private
2 MB working
12 MB max

You'll note that our working set looks about the same as desktop X. If i call this API to page ourselves out every minute, I can get our working set to about 400K, but at that point, you have to page your application in every time something interesting happens. Plus if you keep paging out, you'll keep the disk access hot, potentially stopping a portable's hard disk from spinning down. So clearly that's not desired. So what I did last night was try an approach to flush ourselves to disk after we load a widget, and I don't call it again. This allows the widget to keep what it truly needs to run resident and removes the cruft from RAM.

What I am saying is true in any paged VM system. Mac OS has the same deal. If you look in top on the Mac, you'll see that some apps seem to take up ungodly amounts of memory, but a lot of this ends up being shared memory, or memory that can be paged out, RPRIV in top is the only number that really matters... it's the amount of RAM the app actually allocated. As mentioned, that number on the PC is currently around 4-5MB. And as mentioned, that number is the same as Desktop X.

In short, my point is that Task Manager shows you typically everything the process needed to run unless you got so low on ram that it needed to page the application out. On my system, that number is 12M because I have 1.25G of RAM. If you have less RAM, I'd bet that number might be lower because its paged some of the app out. And like I said, we really (from empirical evidence) only need to keep around 2-3M in RAM max to keep the app responsive and not hitting the disk. I've already made that change so that people can feel better about what they see in Task Manager, but it's just an accounting illusion. But if it makes people feel better, so be it."

SuiteLife

on Dec 08, 2004

What do others think? I just an trying to debate on buying Konfabulator. I already am using Desktop X and have been for about 2 years, but have not had a good time with it, since it crashes alot for me. Errors with different widgets and problems with widgets looking funny on the screen. Konfabulator has be perfect for the first 24 hours of used. I like what I see so far.

Septimus

on Dec 08, 2004

He has incorporated the mem changes into the latest release, so it does look better in task manger.

If your anything like me, you'll use what suits you at the time and meets your requirements in either day to day use or a change of theme/style as the mood takes you.

I'm also a OD subscriber, but it hasn't stopped me from buying Konfab (owned it on the Mac anyway) for windows. Not because its better as such, but it gives me more choice which is what I like. As the app goes it as very stable. Mem usage is on a par (maybe a mb or two more) than DX and Kapsules, but its not as bad as it was.

Give them all a go. With Kapsules for example, you are basically getting a Windows native Konfab anyway. DX is definately improving also as they take on user feedback. The latest beta is very nice and thanks to Tiggz, Martin et al, the objects are also far better than they used to be.

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