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Do You Use Dashboard?

  • Yes

    Votes: 69 82.1%
  • No

    Votes: 15 17.9%

  • Total voters
    84
I use it to check the weather in 3 places, show my iCal events, convert currency, sometimes calculator, widget and app update reminders and of course Chi Pet!
 
I use it quite often:

Lyrics, Weather, Calculator, Date/Time, iStat Pro and Dictionary/Thesaurus all get pretty regular use!
 
I use Dashboard quite frequently for a number of different things. iStat Pro comes in handy many times a day. I have a nice little scientific calculator widget called PEMDAS that I use a lot. Stickies come in handy sometimes when I think I'm going to forget something. The Deep Sleep widget is really nice for when I'm packing my laptop up between classes, just to make sure it won't wake up before I want it to. ImageUpload comes in handy for when I need to post a quick photo on a forum or some such. The Converter widget comes in handy frequently for unit and currency conversion...and the list goes on! I use Dashboard quite a bit.
 
I use it...

Weather here, and at my fishin' hole up in the mountains.

Time here, and time where my business partner is. He travels to places like India and Thailand a lot, so it's a nice way to get a quick look at what time it is where he is, before I call and wake him up at 3:00 am.

TV Forecast - So I can see what's playing today.

Calculator.

Password generator.

iTunes - A quicker way to pause and adjust volume.
 
how is dashboard too slow? you have a 2.4 ghz macbook pro. :confused:

I just think its too slow. It took forever to load things on my PowerBook and when I got this new computer I thought ok, I'll give dashboard another try... it still sucks.

When you open it, it has to load every single widget and it takes forever and then when I'm not using it they are all still loaded. I have parallels with Windows going running Visual Studio as well as Aperture constantly and I'd just rather not have that slow down when I need to run Photoshop or Contribute.

I guess I just don't see why I should waste all that, albeit not that much, processor and memory, when Stattoo does the iCal, weather, time, mail, and iTunes notifications/jobs in a constant, unobtrusive, semitransparent way. For those few times that I need to look up movies, I copied the Movies widget from Leopard and used Amnesty Singles to make it an application that I use maybe once every two weeks. To top it off, the dashboard calculator is completely pointless if you use quicksilver constantly as I do because calculations require nothing but keystrokes without ever opening dashboard or the calculator application.

The one thing I really did use before I disbanded Dashboard was the stickies widget, but there is already a program called Stickies and my notes are generally a lot more complex I guess. I use Stickies almost daily but I wouldn't want to load up Dashboard just to use them.

I will say this: when I first switched to Mac two years ago I was gung-ho about the dashboard and I downloaded hoardes of widgets... till I started to realize there are better options and a simple web browser tends to be sufficient.
 
When you open it, it has to load every single widget and it takes forever and then when I'm not using it they are all still loaded. I have parallels with Windows going running Visual Studio as well as Aperture constantly and I'd just rather not have that slow down when I need to run Photoshop or Contribute.

Dashboard only loads up the widgets after you've restarted your computer or haven't accessed the Dashboard for a long time. If you use it frequently, then all the widget contents are stored in RAM and they will display instantly.

I use Dashboard all the time - if I make a phone call and need to jot something down, I just type it into a sticky on Dashboard. Checking the weather is great too.
 
I use it all the time, its really nice when I need to see what the weather is or what day Tuesday is next week or even just to pause iTunes. Its very convenient and out of the way and I love it. On my tower I have a widget that allows me to look up guitar chords which is great cause its a pain trying to find it online. Not for everyone, sure, but I absolutely love it.
 
yeah i use it for stickies, weather, calculator, seeing what's on tv, and dictionary/thesaurus.
 
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