Atom/RSS Feed Reader

Atom/RSS Feed Reader is a gadget you can use to read news via Atom or RSS right on your desktop. It enables you to set up multiple feeds, view topics and summaries, as well as launch websites in your default browser.

Add feeds to read news on the desktop

The interface is represented by a small window which can be moved anywhere on the screen. You can add new feeds by entering the URL and a display name, or by importing them from Internet Explorer.
Four topics per page are shown by default, and you can ask the tool to show six or eight instead. Clicking on a topic triggers Atom/RSS Feed Reader to open another frame that lets you read the summary, find out the published date, and open the webpage in your browser to read the entire story.

Customize the gadget skin and other settings

It's possible to remove any feed from the list, toggle between four interface skins (default, brown, red, Vista), enable auto-scroll through feeds, as well as set the info refresh rate to every minute, 15 or 30 minutes, every hour, or only at the widget's startup.
Thanks to the Windows built-in options shared among most gadgets, you can also change the frame's size, make it stay on top of other windows, as well as adjust its opacity level.

Evaluation and conclusion

Unsurprisingly, the app barely used CPU and RAM in our tests. No error dialogs popped up and it didn't hang or crash. However, since gadgets are no longer supported by Microsoft due to security vulnerabilities exposed by the Windows Sidebar in Windows 7 and Vista, this tool will no longer receive any updates.
To sum it up, Atom/RSS Feed Reader offers a simple solution for Windows 7 and Vista users who want to easily keep track of their favorite news websites.