It’s been a long journey spending hours every evening working towards identifying and fixing hung issue of gadget under Internet Explorer 9. I thought I did it numerous times, but I was not there yet at that moment as time testing showed. Again, majority of code has been revised and rewritten and every line has been under suspect.

Luckily, I have come up to conclusion on how to handle this freezing/hanging issue properly, so gadget will no longer bother you on your Windows shutdown or closing Settings screen.

I couldn’t leave new release without any new features, since many would not find the reason to upgrade, so I checked by notes on what was wanted and added System Drives utilization information.
Unlike other gadgets showing Drives information I have seen on the Gallery, I have made my gadget show all your ready drives by default and you can configure exceptions instead. This way, whenever you plug in flash drive or mount a network drive - the gadget will automatically pick it up and expand the gadget with one more line representing the Drive. Similarly, if you unplug the drive - it will disappear from the gadget dynamically. All animated, of course, and simply working out of the box.

As there might be more releases going forward, I decided to add check for an update, so that you would know exactly when new version is available for your download. Once new version is out - you will see notification on the gadget with a link to download page.

Way too many improvements are delivering with this release, but they are so behind the scene, that you will not notice, so no need to list them except that it will use slightly less CPU now after running for a while.

Please go to the original iPK Combo post for download information.

Leave me your feedback! That’s all my motivation for this free software

Hello Folks,

This is to let you know it has passed a year since the original release of iPK Combo 1.0 Windows Gadget. Your feedback has turned me on and I have created time for developing new update - thanks for your feedback!
Please go to the original iPK Combo post for download information.

I started with IE9 transparency fix which turned to be an easy fix, but at that time I could not stop developing more features I have heard from you guys!

One of the wishlist contained adding grey color and I decided to redraw signal and battery graphics that way, to enable you picking any colors you want to enable smooth fade between these custom colors.

The next step was to enable you guys picking the color comfortably without entering the hex of it - that is where I have come up with a great deal - Color Picker by Stefan Petre. Modified a little to fit our size and needs.

Next step was redoing the Properties page to fit all the data handy in tabs and adding sliders to change animation speed and external IP refresh interval.

Then I noticed that there was no way to show any of the IP addresses without showing the signal, so I have redone the code to enable this as well.

Then I noticed that a nice little globe that I love is not seen any often as it only shows when checking external IP and hides when it is done, but since IP is returned so fast - the globe does not appear at all, so I decided to add a little delay before it hides so we could enjoy its rotation - hope you like it.

I also noticed that if an access point is longer to fit within small area - I was simply hiding overflow, but it was done by the space as a delimiter, so potentially if you have a long name of access point without spaces - it could not show at all. I switched this behavior to make the digits longer than 10 a bit more invisible and continue under percentage.

Another important finding to me was that there was a minor memory leak when you consume animation and a little performance tweaking project started. I have revised the code removing unnecessary variables wherever I spotted the case and could not spotted the leak. I got help of the tool called Drip, but the leak was not that simple to be identifiable. Nevertheless, I have identified the leak and fixed it.

Hope this update with release my hands out of the code for a while and enable my wife using all my free time

Thank you for using iPK Combo gadget! Cheers!

Gadget shows Wireless signal, Access point name, Wireless IP, External IP, CPU load, Free RAM memory, System Drives utilization, Laptop battery level and estimated time of battery life.

Introduce smooth animation and complete customization - you control exactly what items you want to see, animation speed, color pattern, etc.

Greetings goes to iSlayer for original gadgets that inspired me.

Download iPK Combo 1.2

Gadget use PHP script that is hosted on this website as well as whatismyip.org to identify your IP address. This can be changed in gadget settings - any webpage that is showing your external IP can be used - gadget will find the IP address on that page.

What’s New in 1.2:

• Fix: Freezing/Hang issue on IE9
• Fix: Massive CPU and memory usage improvemets
• New: System Drives added
• New: New Version notification
• New: many minor improvements

What’s New in 1.1

• Fix: IE9 transparency bug
• Fix: Minor memory leak fixed
• Fix: Enable Show IP whithout Signal
• New: Skin custom color and fade
• New: Redesigned graphics
• New: New Properties page
• Minor optimizations

More Screenshots: one, two, two