My Insightful Blog

Productivity is something that everyone, regardless of if he or she wishes to deny it, wants. No one wants their Windows PC to be complicated, and yet it is. This is partly why so many Windows users have Mac-envy, because Mac OS X is so simple to navigate and use that is laughs in the face of Windows. So, what has Microsoft tried to do to fix this?

Well, there's quick links. Yeah, that's right, those 16x16 icons that you can get to appear on your taskbar. However these also have a fatal flaw when it comes to productivity; they easily clog up room on your taskbar. You may make things easier to navigate, but in a trade you also give up the amount of opened windows that'll be shown on the taskbar. Another fatal flaw is that sometimes you cannot tell which is which shortcut, they may have pictures but those pictures can easily be several folders, so now you have to guess. And being able to change their icons is somewhat difficult as is.

What does Mac OS X, then, have that's better? Well, quite simply it's the dock bar. The dock bar lets you easily change the size of the shortcuts on the bar, easily change their pictures, lets you hide them and can eaven magnify them if you need them to. Great! But, there is also one flaw in this, though many may not consider this a flaw. When you minimize windows in Mac OS X, they also are minimized to the dock bar. So now the dock bar is like an improved quick links (though the dock did come first mind you). It acts as a place to store shortcuts and a place for windows to be sent to when minimized. Well, what I want is both, and in my home PC which has Windows XP installed.

Now, many know this, but I'll mention it anyhow. There are roughly four or five different Mac OS X dock bar copies for the Windows system. There is ObjectDock, Rocket Dock, RK Launcher, Y'z Dock and Moby Dock. However, only two of these are really good. Moby Dock is pretty bad and messes up at times, ObjectDock wastes too much RAM (I clocked around 30 MB on average), and Y'z Dock is now illegal because Apple got a court order to cease and desist. So this leaved RK Launcher and Rocket Dock. I personally use Rocket Dock because it's all that I need.

So now turn off those quick links! Just start chucking in shortcuts and folders into your new dock bar and you're done! But don't forget to search through those preferences to see all of what your dock can do, you may like them.

Oh wait, I almost forgot. What if your dock becomes huge and thus complicated to use again? Well, you can always organize it. There's a docklet - a docklet is a program designed to run in dock bar - called KKMenu. It's a bit complicated to use however, but you can create a folder with all of your shortcuts in it (you should make folders to further organize them), then turn on KKMenu and find and select that folder with your shortcuts on your computer, then when you click it a menu will popup with them in it.

All and all, the dock was one of Apple's best designs and now it has just begun its transition into Windows to make Windows easier to use.


Here's my pros and cons:

Pros:
- Easily access shortcuts
- Save taskbar space
- Unclog your decktop
- Be more productive

Cons:
- Takes up a small amount of room on your screen
- Takes up a bit of RAM