The Calculator application in Tiger is improved, but it is nice to have access to a simple four-function calculator that doesn't eat up any desktop space. The Calculator widget is pretty self-explanatory for a person who uses the calculator a lot, this widget is very useful.

I'd say that it would be a useful widget if I used the Address Book more often. This widget is particularly useful to browse for a contact while on the phone, or if you have already a ton of windows open and organized the way that you'd like them and don't feel like adding another application to the mix just to get a contact. You can search through your address book using the widget and do just about everything else other than add new contacts - for that you have to actually open the Address Book application. Simply bring up the Dashboard and you can flip through all of your contacts, and if you need to, just hit the red button to exit the Dashboard and open the actual Address Book application. The widget saves you the desktop space of having the Address Book application open. I am not yet organized enough on my Mac to make extensive use of the Address Book (although, now with the ability to sync up my Blackberry, I probably will). The Address Book widget is a front end to Tiger's Address Book application.

Here are the widgets that are included in Tiger: Apple provides a total of 14 widgets with Tiger (and a link to download many, many more) and they also provide excellent documentation for developers to make their own widgets. To me, the biggest attraction to Dashboard is the fact that you move very useful items off of your desktop and onto basically a separate desktop that is very easy to access.

Mac os 10.4 tiger