The new Vista desktop...

"Why?" you ask.... Simple: to show you that icon up top, for the Ultimate Windows Tweaker on this page that does a lot of good things to the O/S for you, like changing the "New User" account name to yours, in case you hadn't figured out how, or making many other little changes for convenience.

The other reason is just to show how to have the sidebar gadgets visible without that big dark and gawd-awful sidebar itself. Why they never made its opacity variable, like other Aero features are, I'll never know - but that another of those reasons few of us fell instantly in love with Vasta Vista after it came limping out of obscurity following all that overblown hype a few years back. It's also why we bombarded Mighty Microsoft (are you still there, Sally?) with all kinds of rants and suggestions, almost but not quite including where to put it so it won't get a sunburn.

Anyway, getting back to explaining this, what you do is, you drag the gadgets you want on the un-sidebarred desktop out of that sidebar onto a spot away from it. Then you right-click on that little thingy at the top of the sidebar, and bring up the menu offering "close sidebar" - which you then click on. It disappears, and then you can drag your desired gadgets back over into their parking spots on the side - or wherever else you'd like them.

P.S. -
I didn't have any luck using the program for removing the arrows (from Frameworkx) maybe because his site is defunct now, and others have copied his program, and it don't work for me. But there's a Registry hack you can use to remove those ugly arrows, as follows:-

Start Button -> In Search box, type Regedit, and press Enter.
In the first section, H-Key Classes Root, scroll away down to the 'L' section of it, and look for the listing for Linkfile, shown as (all lower case) lnkfile. Click on that word, to show its other values in the right-hand column. Look for IsShortcut, of type Reg_SZ, (a String Value). It will not show any other information beside the Reg_SZ. Right-click on it and choose delete.
You'll be asked if you really want to do this, and yes, you do. Delete it, and close Registry.
There goes those ugly arrows! If you want them back, you have to put back that item where you found it, so make some notes in case you need them later.