Obviously the terms gadget and widget have many meanings. However, when talking about Window Vista or Mac OS X, these are small applications that run on your computer desktop to give you information and to interact with. Apple calls them Widgets and they have been part of the Mac operating system for quite awhile. Microsoft calls them Gadgets and they have become available with Windows Vista. Widgets or Gadgets can give you the weather, tell you a joke, track a stock, show you the time, and much more. Widgets for use with windows XP are also available from Yahoo! at http://widgets.yahoo.com.