Windows Vista only: The built-in search feature is one of the more useful aspects of Windows Vista, but the need to constantly update the file index is often seen as creating a performance hit. Switching off indexing altogether isn’t a wise idea (it’s needed for apps like Outlook, for instance). The MS-developed Indexer Status Gadget gives you more insight into how the indexing process works, showing how many items on your machine Windows still needs to index, letting you stop and start the indexing process if you want those to temporarily reclaim those processor cycles, or letting the indexer run full tilt rather than its default behaviour of slowing down when you’re performing other tasks on your PC. Indexer Status Gadget is a free download for Windows Vista only, runs inside Windows Sidebar. Indexer Status Gadget [via Engineering Windows 7]