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Although Windows Vista wasn’t really the hit Microsoft expected to deliver, it did brought about some new features which appealed to public. It brought about gadgets, but native support is dropped in modern Windows iterations. They can still be used though, and System Uptime II is a tiny gadget which neatly displays for how long your PC has been running.

One of the first things you need to know is that the gadget can’t just be installed on Windows iterations 7 and above. You need to install a suitable host application first, such as Thoosje Sidebar or 8GadgetPack. It doesn’t take a lot of time and effort, and all gadgets run smoothly from this point forward.

The name of the little gadget says everything it needs to. Its core functionality is to let you know for how long the computer has been active, which is especially useful if you leave it performing some complex task and want to know how long it took.

Since it’s a desktop gadget, it benefits from all the default features. Bringing up the context menu makes it possible move the gadget, adjust level of opacity, and even make it sit on top of every other window to always have it in plain sight. The latter option is useful because it doesn’t create a taskbar icon to easily bring it to front.

Unfortunately, it’s not fitted with any extra options to be able to record or save previous sessions. The visual design is appealing, displaying uptime in the form of a running analog clock. Sadly, there aren’t any other skins to choose from or any sliders to adjust the colors used.

All things considered, we can state that System Uptime II comes with good intentions, and is sure to inform you of PC uptime. Sadly, it’s packed with a pretty straightforward set of features, both in terms of functionality and aesthetics.