Done with Dashboard: Back to Konfabulator

I just thought I'd add this little bit as a follow-up to my previous post about where I think Apple went wrong with widgets. I still think all the things I mentioned in that piece; however, after using Yahoo!'s free iteration of Konfabulator for close to a week now, I think I figured out where Apple really went wrong with widgets: Dashboard.

Actually, the problem is that they locked the widgets to the Dashboard and gave you no option to actually "turn off" the Dashboard. Instead, Apple coded this bit of fluff into the OS (and they seem to have tied it in with the Dock in some odd way) adding unnecessary bloat to the System. Now that I've been playing with Konfabulator for a week, I'm no longer using Dashboard and Tiger's widgets at all. There are only two Konfabulator widgets that I have running continuously, and if I ever go to do some memory and processor-intensive task on my Powerbook, like video editing and after effects, I can simply close Konfabulator, with no worry of it causing any problems.

What two widgets do I have running? Read after the jump for more...

I have The Weather widget running in the lower right hand corner of my screen, and I have it set to Desktop level, so I can always see it, but it never gets in the way of other windows or files when I have to move stuff around on my little 12-inch screen. The other widget I have open: Picture Frame. I have it also set to Desktop level and sitting in the middle of my screen. I am using its new Flickr feature to randomly grab a picture from Flickr every 15 minutes. So whenever I feel bored or wonder if there's anything new and interesting that's shown up on Flickr, I simply use Expose to knock all my open windows out of the way and take a look at the new unexpected picture on the Desktop. So, one useful, informative widget and one frivolous fun widget and neither is tied into the OS. That's great. That's what I think widgets are worth. What do you think? Our friends over at Downloadsquad are asking that very question today, so head on over there and weigh in with your thoughts. Feel free to argue with me in the comments here. ;-)