/me raises hand on Dashboard too.

Weather, stocks, calendar, and package tracking were all killer "I want to know this in under 5 seconds without a lot of thought" uses for me.

Many of these notifiers are now living in my browser, next to the URL bar. But having those always possibly stealing mental focus is bad - these are things I want as pull notifications, not push. And I don't want to use my mouse.

I hit F12 a lot every day, and so this change is going to take a while for me to get used to. But maybe that is the right metaphor - maybe the new Dashboard screen is similar to putting something on a wall next to my desk. It's a glance to my right to see a calendar, or a glance to a window mounted thermometer.