Comparison of File Extensions Gadget and Email

Microsoft while releasing the operating system Windows Vista in 2008 announced the addition of Windows Sidebar as additional feature to the new OS. These utilities added to the sidebar such as clocks are the “gadgets”. The files having GADGET extension are executable files basically associated to Microsoft. Such files can be downloaded from the Microsoft website Windows Live Gallery. They are easy to download and open within seconds. They are little programs which are executed within the sidebar of Windows Vista. They also contain many files having a ZIP format. As GADGET files are compressed to a ZIP format, they may be renamed with the ZIP file extension and can be opened using any decompression software compatible with ZIP like Coral WinZip 14.5, 7-Zip, WinACE and RARLAB’s WinRAR.

The file extension EMAIL is an alternative extension to EML files. It is a message file made by using Microsoft’s Outlook Express which is an email application bundled together with Internet Explorer versions 4.0 to 6.0. Such files are used for email messages. The new alternative EML extension is used more extensively than this older EMAIL one. EML can also be opened in standard text editors such as Kedit or Notepad. In case of the files containing images or HTML, they will not get rendered as in Outlook Express. Other email applications such as Thunderbird may or may not be capable of opening the EMAIL files. It depends on the contents of an email message. However if it is renamed to EML extension, it can be opened by most of the other applications.

There is a fundamental difference between the two extensions. GADGET is used for the new gadgets added to the Windows Vista sidebar while EMAIL is for the Microsoft email application Outlook.