Having tested most of the sidebar Widgets, they seem to work reasonably well. A little bit of styling is required to make them more attractive.
The only exception is the RSS Widget. It looks like a good idea, but once a feed URL is entered the Widget immediately rejects it. There seem to be a number of third party plugins that could be investigated if it is a required feature.
I think the Comment page is particulary unattractive. It needs a sidebar of some type and something to make an obvious link back to the Home page.