I think I have this already on my HP desktop, though it's called RocketDock..

takashimiike 3G edition

I use rocketdock on my PCs, not gonna lie, I love it and it runs sweet sexy smooth.

sisedi

Wow, even Dell is being infected by the Smugtrain? Please.

CarsonB

oh and who in the right mind uses the gay sidebar?? so useless, wastes ram, and slows startup to a crawl sometimes... and there's no really useful "gadgets/widgets" for it...

Crispus

docks are really gay imo, or i'm just way to used to the taskbar... it just works so well. anyways, vista looks bad with a dock, especially that one. also don't u think dell is trying to hard to raise appeal?

"duh, let's put a dock in but we'll put it on top so that we don't copy mac and people will buy our computers, pwned! doi..."

seriously, dell is losing lot's of business and this won't help. within the last year the main dell building in my city (edmonton, canada) closed down... there doing bad...

Crispus

Can't they think of anything original!

MINI Driver

objectdock? anyone?

Glavan27

those icons look really bad.

yeeeeauuuk.

better looking than desktop shorcuts though :o

nykwil

Haha Microsoft can't even hook up their own OS, they need hardware manufactures to add good ideas.

Joseph

Is dell going to start making custom Apple computers? If not, Giz is a great place to start rumors!

They should would put Psystar out of business.

wolfenstein-3d lied and no longer owns an iphone

Been there, seen better. Its called RocketDock

Cordfucious the Black

Am I the only mac user that realizes that Apple didn't create everything? These new mac converts are such zealots they make me look bad and its really starting to grind my gears.

All modern technology is derivative, and as soon as someone has an completely original idea they will be bought up by either Apple or Microsoft. Apple is able to seem more on the cutting edge because they have a smaller more loyal base that can accept change.

I for one never want Apple to take over the business world because that will inhibit their ability to change and try to innovate.

PS. I am an Apple Sales Professional, Apple Certified Help Desk Technician and an Apple Certified Technical Co ordinator and a mac user since the Mac Classic

Canuck.Viking

Derivative of who? Sun's Solaris OS had a dock way before OS X.

LittleJon

@nykwil: Thats cuz Windows has no standards for High Def Icons. The Icon maker on Mac creates icons with 512x512 resolution. Windows is 32x32 so what do you expect.

Wow Mac screen shots look beautiful embedded.

Joseph

Actually the original "Dashboard" came back in 1994. OS/X copied. So it's OK to copy OS/X!

altus

...Apparently no one here is aware of the fact that Dell hired Stardock to make this dock to be used in the new studio laptops.

[www.wincustomize.com]

TheDoomer

umm... this is the first thing I would try to delete from a new PC, way to waste ones ram!

Tohe

I'd rather be using quicklaunch (which I am now) fits in the sidebar, and I can fire up all my major apps in about 2 seconds, even when I'm not just on the desktop.

kyel57

@Tohe: I'm talking in a general sense, not about this product :D

Canuck.Viking

@Canuck.Viking: although I agree with your smart point of view, I don't think it fits Apple's business model and vision.

Tohe

Repeat after me: "Creating a Mac OS X-like dock will not turn my PC into a Mac."

mmeister

@Crispus: Dude, you're right - docks are sooo gay! I used to hang out at this one dock (my straight friend assured me it wasn't gay), and there were constantly gay faggots sucking my dick!? What does a normal guy have to do these days to keep his dick out of a gay man's mouth???

[www.theonion.com]

itchytooth

How awesome. They preload crap to clean up the crap they preload!

BaseVilliN

@Canuck.Viking well put, sir. I agree 100% (and hey...my first Mac was a Classic, too!)

biker_ray_pa

To everyone who is up in arms about Apple not creating everything, yes you're right. a 5th grader with a pencil and paper could've drawn the idea of a dock in 1845... but the argument is being made that the concept of the dock was MADE POPULAR through OS X, and this implementation is a direct response to it's success. I've never heard of Sun's Solaris so while yes it might have been in existence way before OS X's version, Dell didn't go out of their way to put this in there because Sun's Solaris had it.

They even CALLED it a dock... At least Microsoft tried to hide their copying by calling Vista's widgets "gadgets".... they sure had me fooled. But Dell didn't even try. Oh wait... I guess they did put it on the TOP of the screen......... lame.

RoCKSTaH53

Gee, what a great and truly innovative idea.

chrstphr

Is it just me or some of the comments here are getting weird. I do understand and appreciate humor based comments but some are just so retard-sounding. Sigh! But I still think Dell is a cool computer maker. It's my computer of choice when I started computing 12 yrs ago ;-)

rjbuddyboi

@Canuck.Viking:
I KNEW there were Apple users with common sense and the ability to think rationally. It's too bad others like you are over-shadowed by the gullible masses.

Darkest Daze

@itchytooth: Who the hell do you think you are? Man up, and stop demeaning others in orther to build up upon your insecurities, idiot!

Tohe

@Joseph: Which icon maker program is that?

Zeasar

@Tohe: Um. Read the link.

.endejas.

@rjbuddyboi: You make a good point. Hopefully Gizmodo can enact some kind of block that keeps people with disabilities (Down syndrom, cerebral palsy, ADHD, etc) out of these comment threads. After all, the internet is where we normals come to get away from those people. Isn't anything sacred anymore?

itchytooth

@GoodBytes:
Not to mention a lot of Mac owners I've heard that wished they had a start menu to easily access programs.

Darkest Daze

@Joseph:
"Haha Microsoft can't even hook up their own OS, they need hardware manufactures to add good ideas."

Haha Joseph can't even hook up his own PC to try Windows! He need a simple one from a computer builder.

This is a terrible idea, as you cannot multi-task properly, and you don't know what program are actually running or not.
I heard countless of Mac users that wishes Mac OS to have a taskbar-like bar, like in Windows and Linux xWindows...

GoodBytes

@Joseph:
You are wrong like in your life.
Vista uses 256x256 icons.
ico only supports 255x255 file format, and with a bit of hacking made it 256x256.

Mac OS X is limited to 128x128. And since Mac OS tiger 256x256. Documentation was found on Apple own website.
[developer.apple.com]

GoodBytes

Looks terrible. that's the kind of thing i immediately uninstall upon first boot up. and that's not even fast enough. Toolbar docks are for retards that don't know how to manage an interface. ...too soon?

aeroworks

Im very happy they did this.

Im using rocket dock, which (by the looks of things) is better than this, but i'm still glad that.. hell. dell and microsoft have balls to take a tech and make it better, use if more, let things evolve.

you know?

not sure how to explain..

Vonn64

@.endejas.: I did, that article is still demeaning and portraits gays in a negative light, even as the joke it pretends to be, so go figure who is the retard(s).

Tohe

it's a lot easier to access programs on a Mac, I'd say. Just add a stack or folder for applications to the dock, or open any finder window and click applications. 2 clicks whereas on pc it's, click on startbar, hover on "all programs" then wade through ridiculously long list of everything, which doesn't always have every program, and it doesn't actually give you the location of the program in the file hierarchy.

kzooguy

what do you mean? You can multitask fine with a dock... and the dots or triangles show you what's running. and you can still tab between running programs.

But this implementation doesn't look too pretty. I don't like the gui design.

kzooguy

@Glavan27:
Im with you

stoleriko

@mmeister: And thank God for that. If my Dell ever somehow turned into a Mac, well....out the window it goes.

TheDoomer

I HATE the dock. Compared to the taskbar in Windows, it's not that functional. Oh big pretty floaty icons. A little arrow to pinpoint which one you're using.

But then it gets complex as you use more programs. And it doesn't showcase every program on the computer. So the dock is limited in showing what you're using, extra content, plus programs you're not using, but use a lot.

Pretty complicated, huh? Anyways, it looks a lot like the dock thing I downloaded from ObjectDock.

quikboy

looks like a lawsuit just waiting to happen.

I think the nail in the coffin (during the lawsuit) will be the fact that they even went so far as to copy the little divider (the one between the IE icon and the help icon).

tidybowl

@quikboy: The Dock stack allows you to access all of your applications in list view if you put it in there. It's actually very handy. How many applications would one ever have open until their dock has absolutely no space left?

But yeah, anyone who has a great deal of applications that they keep in high priority can use the Applications stack in the view of list so they don't have that big waste-of-space grid. It works similarly to the Start Menu, so it's pretty straight forward.

Kaiser-Machead's Chips Ahoy!

I prefer the desktop shortcuts, the dock looks silly..

kibets

Dock? I see no boats.

STFU Kaiser.

Kaiser-Machead's Chips Ahoy!

Is this really news alot of manufcaturers put something like this on there systems; HP has been doing it for years

utube2007

@Crispus: If you use Google Desktop's sidebar feature you might think otherwise. Google has a better notepad and some other nice things like "integrated" Google Talk, and a Calnedar that can hook up with your Google account calendar (plus I'm sure there's more like gmail and stuff but I don't use it). Also there are other widgets just for Google's sidebar... I use the KQED NPR widget which lets me just hit play to get NPR (and there's other ones that let you customize what Internet radio station you want)

fusiongt

Don't use what you don't want.

Now dry those tears.

strider_mt2k

@Zeasar: Icon Composer - It's part of XCode 3.0 I believe.
@GoodBytes: yeah, thanks for sending me the OSX 10.4 Documentation I'm on 10.5.3 Leopard now.
@GoodBytes: I've been using Windows since 3.1. And I have a legit purchased copy of Vista. It's not that I don't like Windows. It's just that I think Microsoft has lost their imagination for creating bleeding edge software that is cool.
@Darkest Daze: Actually, QuickSilver / Launchy is incredibly better than any Start Menu/Apple Menu concept. I highly recommend you check it out, it will reduce your clickery.
@quikboy: I don't think there is any place in Windows that showcases every program on the computer either. At least not on my XP or Vista Machines. ObjectDock is good but don't you still need WinCustomize or something like that too make it run?

Joseph

No way people will use it. People seem to like having 40 or 50 different icons on their desktop. Looks pretty decent for an app created by Dell though.

xxdesmus

@strider_mt2k: Sometimes you have to use what you don't want :(. I have to use IE for web development testing because I need to test to make sure that all IE users will have a pleasurable experience when they visit my websites :). I'm trying to accommodate everyone--it's good form.

Joseph

um....rocketdock?

theorie

So they emulated Tiger. Time to get started on getting to Leopard standards.

blacksamurai87

Well jeah i had this program.
It was originaly for Alienware i deleted because it made my pc lag a lot because alone it ran up about 50mb of my ram. That was back when i had 512mb ram.
And jeah you can move it up and down not side to side tho.
It looks nice tho and dell has made some changes to the program.
It looks really clean nd efficient.

SneakerFiend

Always have your bags packed and on the dock just in case.

Rick36

@Canuck.Viking:

i was with you til' your last paragraph... now i just want to cockpunch you!

ferrdidly

@theorie: exactly.

Voyou_Charmant

there have been DOCK knockoffs for Windows for years now_ This is not anything new or exciting_

Also - those icons are not -Final Cut -Aperture -iPhoto -iChat so I think Dell needs to revamp those icons a bit or cease and desist as they might confuse potential mac buyers into thinking a Dell machine runs the Mac OS_

uberfu

Im a mac user but i also use windows and for some one to say that they need a taskbar in OSX clearly shows that they never used a mac. When u have a Program Open and you minimize it it goes in to the dock. not the icon of the program but a picture of the window it self. So even when the icon for that program is not set to be in the dock it will appear..ObjectDock and that dock from dell do not work the same as the one in osx

southsidequeens139

@GoodBytes:
vista also has 512 icons... its called the EXTRA LARGE

@Joseph: and yea mac screen grabs look nice cause they are .pngs... that saves alpha at a 16 bit value... aka no harsh edges/mattes like gifs..
... (post 10.4 of course... cause 10.3 did tiffs)

@ anyone else that has a mac and is a fanboy... if vista predates 10.5... then who really had 512 icons first??? i'm an old mac fanboy... pre osx

Delmarc

@fusiongt: still not worth it when it takes up so much ram and slows startup... i can do all those things from firefox and add extensions if i want more... and i'm pretty sure that double clicking firefox is a lot faster than slowing down startup with sidebar (actually, that's a fact for me lol)... so ya i don't use sidebar...

Crispus

This looks exactly like the common desktop environment for unix I use to use over ten years ago. The MAC has a similar look? I had no idea.*sarcasm*

fastm3driver

i thought yous aid it was going to look better. that looks like crap.

stre

Just clearing some bad apples out...

@altus:

If you're gonna bring up the fact that Apple "copied" the dock, then you must be forgetting that the dock has been in use on Steve-machines since the NeXT days, so that's like bringing up the fact that Windows Sidebar is like Macs Dashboard. Oh Wait, we've already been down that road.

@GoodBytes:

"This is a terrible idea, as you cannot multi-task properly, and you don't know what program are actually running or not.
I heard countless of Mac users that wishes Mac OS to have a taskbar-like bar, like in Windows and Linux xWindows..."

In Mac, you can tell which programs are running from the dock. (and with RocketDock you can too!)

@Delmarc:
I'm here to help you man. It'd be funny if they reply to any of these though.

spacecadetdavsot

I don't think this looks too good. While the idea is interesting, the look is just off (and let's be honest, they were going for looks more than anything). They should make it so that it better integrates with Vista's Aero look.

MrHaroHaro

useless docks

thomusvoo

Stardock, who developed the dock, has been making these kinds of things since the early 90s.

Those who remember Object Desktop on OS/2 probably remember the LaunchPad. Docks and launchers and the such were old hat by the time OS X came out.

Object Desktop for OS/2: [www.stardock.com]

Draginol

Dell, please...

Dynasty