Light saber

If there’s anything good that Windows Vista brought about is the Gadget engine. Although ditched in the following OS, it can still be activated even in Windows 10. Alternatives quickly became available, using different extensions, but providing similar functionality. Among others, Light saber is a widget with which you’re sure to have fun, especially if you know who R2D2 is.

One of the good technical things about gadgets and widgets is that you don’t have to go through any kind of installation, being enough to run them. Taking little space, you can create a library of all your gadgets on an USB Flash drive. However, this one is made for the Yahoo! Widget Engine, so you need to make sure it’s installed on your PC.

As soon as the widget gets accepted by the host engine, a small light saber appears on your desktop. Just like any other widget or gadget, it comes with a set of configurations either to make it stay on top of other windows, or manage dedicated options. Moreover, you can easily drag it across the desktop, with neat animations and no window-related buttons, such as close or minimize.

In order for the sword to move around, you need to grab it by the hilt. Doing this not only makes the sword tilt in the opposite direction, but also triggers a “swoosh” sound, just as you probably heard in the critically acclaimed motion picture.

There are some dedicated options besides the one related to gadgets in general. The color can be set to anything you pick from a classic color palette, while the hilt can either belong to some popular characters like Anakin Skywalker, Ben Kenobi, Count Dooku, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, and the list would not have been complete without Darth Vader.

Moving the light saber around is not the only action that triggers sound. In fact, you don’t even have to move a muscle to hear the buzz of the laser as it stays active. Sadly, you can’t hit anything with it, turn it off, select a different type, and sound effects are repetitive and produced with high latency.

To sum it up, Light saber comes with good intentions and want to give Star Wars fans yet another lore object to add to the desktop. Unfortunately, the fun wears off pretty quick, with poor, repetitive, and laggy sound effects, while customization leaves a lot more to be desired, especially because you can’t hit or cut through the desktop.