Have you had the chance to try out PowerGadgets, which are cmdlets that can be used to create rich graphical representations of data? You can use it to create charts, gauges and even maps. They also provide some other useful cmdlets to send mail, connect to an SQL data source and connect to a web service.
Think about it... A simple gauge style gadget in your Vista sidebar that gives you utilization of a remote server and/or application. If you're wanting to watch something remotely, and now that you can get the information you want via WMI. To keep an eye on a WMI value, for example, you can pipe that to a PowerGadgets cmdlet and have that available in your sidebar with Vista.
Check out this cool example of using PowerGadgets and Operations Manager 2007 to create a sidebar showing the alerts within OpsMgr.
Check out their 60-day trial.
If there's anything you ever wanted to try with PowerGadgets, but either weren't sure if it was possible or how you would proceed, drop me a comment here, and I'll make sure to answer any questions or pass them along to PowerGadgets.
I've previously mentioned their PowerGadgets MVP program that people may qualify for.
