Personally I have never been a huge fan of the default gadgets in Windows Vista.  Since Vista has been out for well over a year now, I have come across some pretty cool ones.  Being a huge music fan I figured I would start with music gadgets.

I have always loved Pandora and when their desktop streaming audio application came out.  This gadget essentially does the same thing by allowing you to play Pandora Radio without having an extra browser session open.  Of course as with most gadgets you can take it off the sidebar and place it anywhere on your desktop.

    

Usually I like to keep it up in the sidebar, but occasionally I like to bring it completely out so I can tweak my individual channels.

Another cool gadget for listening to a variety of music is 181.FM.  There is music from rockabilly to Opera, to 80's hair bands for wonderful trips down memory lane. (Am I dating myself by saying that?)  Oh well, it is a fun little radio and I truly mean little.

  

Of course there are a lot of other options where you can setup preset radio stations the creator boasts over 50 music stations to choose from.

Another cool feature is being able to lookup song lyrics, and also there is a link to CD Universe so you can purchase the disc if you want.

And finally, although this isn't a music gadget, what is not cool about HAL 9000?  The only purpose of this is when you click it, you get a sound byte from HAL from the classic film 2001 A Space Odyssey.