When you look at the icons that many of us have littered around our desktop there is no denying that other than being program launching points they are pretty useless. In fact I dislike them so much that I don’t have a single program icon on my desktop because between Windows 7′s vastly improved taskbar and the Start Menu search/launcher I don’t need otherwise pointless icons.

I have written about the idea of having smarter icons because it seems pointless to have something as handy as icons on the desktop and not utilize them better. Sure we have desktop gadgets but for the most part they are marginally more useful than the icons.

As we have seen with the information coming out about Windows Phone 7 one of the integral parts of the new MetroUI is the idea of Live Tiles. These tiles which having some restrictions placed on them by Microsoft are almost the next generation of desktop icons. The idea is that these tiles can be used by the developer to display information to the user as well as launching the app.

In all the years we have been using desktop icons they haven’t changed or improved, other than improving the look of them at least. So Microsoft how about letting us desktop users have the same kind of thing as Live Tiles for our desktops?

Just think. You have an icon on your desktop for Outlook that can notify you of new mail, appointments, or you could even go one step further and have a right click Jumplist attached to it. If our icons gained some smarts like this it could mean doing away with resource using desktop gadgets or even notification tray icons. In short we get better access to the information we need and do it without impacting our system resources; and besides being a useful use of desktop icons it would look cool.

How about it Microsoft?

Editor’s Note: Image courtesy of WMPoweruser. Where’s the Live Tiles for the Windows desktop? is a post from: winextra. –mrh]