Rainmeter is a freeware Windows desktop customisation tool, which also appears to exist as a resource meter tool. This strange dual life doesn’t seem to have hurt it though, and both versions seem to be thriving.
There’s a huge library of skins available, and you can tweak the information it puts on your desktop to your heart’s content, y’know stuff like CPU, memory use, application launcher, weather etc etc. The good news is it installs quickly and cleanly, the less good news is you’ll need to invest some time in the documentation to get the best out of it. But apart from that tiny issue, it’s ace. Very ace in fact.
Rainmeter is a desktop customization platform. Through Rainmeter, you can enhance your Windows computer at home or work with skins: handy, compact applets which float freely on your desktop, much like Windows Sidebar gagdgets, or dashboard widgets for the Mac.