This is a neat little desktop customization program that helped me convince some of my friends that i was actually in the beta testing program for windows 8... lol... its called Rainmeter, and can be found here
heres a pic of how it transformed my desktop:
I have a network meter, hdd meter, itunes/WMP monitor, and a calendar that is linked to my gmail calendar and can give me alarms... Love it, but havnt gotten to play with it much yet. Skins can be found all over online, including at deviant art. oooh, and the big dial in the middle is a combo cpumeter, network, hdd, clock gadget... i think its neato