To add a folder to the taskbar, just right-click on the taskbar and choose the Toolbars menu, and then click on New Toolbar. 

Just find the folder that you want… in this instance we’ll select the Computer icon and then click on Select Folder. 

Now you can see the Computer folder right there on the taskbar. If you click the little arrows it will pop up and let you browse through all your drives. 

I always add the Desktop to the toolbar as well.

The same thing works on Windows 7 as well

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UnsignedBandWeb.com Radio

Check out new artists and bands emerging on the music scene with the UnsignedBandWeb.com gadget.  It allows you to control playback, volume, and songs.  You can can pick from a wide variety of music genres including Ska, Rock, Rap, and much more.

Download UnsignedBandWeb.com Radio Desktop Gadget

iTunes Accessory Gadget

This cool gadget allows you to control playback of tracks and other settings in iTunes without having to open up the entire iTunes application.

Download iTunes Accessory Gadget

ChroniX MetalRadio

If you’re a fan of heavy metal, one of the coolest online metal stations is ChroniX Radio.  This handy gadget lets you stream and control playback of their three channels–Aggression, Metal, and Grit–where each has a different flavor of hard rock and metal.

Download Chronix MetalRadio Gadget

iClassical Radio Player

For fans of classical music this gadget lets you stream classical music from a variety of online classical stations.  The only controls are stop and play but being able to select from a wide variety of stations on your desktop make this a excellent app for the classical music connoisseur.

Download the iClassical Radio Player Gadget

Media Player Gadget

This ties into your Windows Media Player library and allows you to easily search it.  It also will display album artwork, track information, and give you visualizations when playing a song.  It is a lot easier to navigate than opening the full WMP application.

Download Media Player Gadget

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There are at least 4 different ways that we can tweak UAC to be less annoying, most of which I’ve written about before.

Note: Disabling or modifying UAC is a security risk. If you want to be as secure as possible, you should likely leave things alone.

1) Disable UAC Entirely

The first thing that you can always do is completely disable UAC… the only problem with this is that you’ll end up making the system less secure if you are also the type of person that downloads and tests a lot of software. I can’t recommend that you do this, but at least you know that you have the option to.

2) Auto-Accept UAC Prompts for Administrators Only

If you want to leave UAC enabled, but disable the prompts from showing up under your administrator account, you  can tweak a setting that will “Elevate without prompting”, so you never see the prompt show up. This is more secure than disabling UAC entirely, because an application started as a regular user can’t perform an action that is meant for administrators. For instance, Internet Explorer can still run in protected mode this way

3) Disable the Blackout Screen (Secure Desktop)

The most annoying part of UAC for me is the screen that blacks out everything other than the UAC prompt… because it usually takes forever to show up, and depending on your video card it can do weird things with your desktop. You can disable the secure desktop feature but leave the UAC prompts the way they are… of course this is potentially a security hole as well, since an application could fraudulently “click” the prompt for you. (Secure desktop prevents applications from doing this)

4) Create Administrator Mode Shortcuts Without UAC Prompts

Instead of disabling UAC in any way, what we can do is setup a few shortcuts that bypass UAC entirely. This is especially useful if you open a particular administrator-mode application a dozen times per day. The trick to this is using task scheduler to launch the applications, and then telling task scheduler to run the task. This is more secure than the other options, since only our special shortcut will bypass UAC.

Extra: Make sure to Install (at least) Vista Service Pack 1

If you haven’t already installed Service Pack 1 or later, you should make sure that you install it… one of the fixes included will limit the number of UAC prompts you have to click through to modify system files.

I’m curious what percentage of our readers have actually disabled UAC. I personally am using method #4, since it’s the best in terms of security, but also eliminating the annoyance for the couple of applications I launch a dozen times per day.

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