At this point, all evidence points to this being a normal fact of life with Mac OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard). Â If you have more than 1 Dashboard widget, you will probably have more than one dashboardclient startup when you run Dashboard. Â The ratio is probably not a 1:1 ratio, since Leopard is designed to consolidate dashboardclients into the smallest number possible… Â But I suspect that the number depends on the number of clients that are running network tasks + 1.
If the DashboardClients threads seem to be taking excessive CPU time, then try reseting Dashboard. Â The easiest way is to just force quit the Dock. Â It is not possible to force quit the DashboardClients through the Activity Monitor, you have to terminate the Dock. Â That will automatically reset Dashboard…. Â (eg. Terminal –> killall Dock)