Yeah, I tried that, but the fact that everything is presented in little widget boxes whose size you can’t change is what makes screens seem a little overloaded to me personally.
I’ve been using Counterize so far, so that’s what I was used to. I’ve stopped using it recently, though, because it went slightly broken in WP 3.5 and the author doesn’t seem to care to quickly fix it.
Happy New Year to you as well
-carbeck