I love having lots of screen space. My MacBook Pro has a maximum screen resolution of 1440×900, which, while not great, is better than the 1280×800 maximum on the Vaio which Microsoft sent me.
To get the most out of these screen resolutions on the Mac, I position the Dock on the right hand side and turn Hiding on. I put the Dock on the right (as opposed to the default option of the bottom) because the laptop display is widescreen. As a result, I have more horizontal than vertical space on the screen and most websites require more vertical than horizontal scrolling!
It is possible to mirror this on Vista by sending the Taskbar to the right and turning on hiding, however when you do that, you immediately miss the clock! I don’t wear a watch and therefore always check the time on whatever computer I am on (and I make sure my computer synchs with a timeserver so the time is accurate!).
In fact, in OS X I have the current time and lots of other information in the menubar at the top of the screen (see image below):
I miss not having all that information available at a glance, at all times, in Vista.
To work around the clock issue install Google Desktop gadgets – nice selection of clocks and other useful gadgets available for that.
I’m certain that you can jam up your system tray (or whatever the new equivalent is) with as much shite as you like – indeed, just you try stopping third-party vendors from doing just that without asking you.
Me, I’ve got all that stuff in the same screen position in Gnome.
Sorry John, I obviously wasn’t clear in my post.
In OS X when I hide the Dock, I can still see all the info in the Menubar at the top of the screen. Whereas in Vista, if I hide the taskbar, I can no longer see the info in the statusbar. Big downer!
John Collins – your comment ended up in my Akismet queue for some reason. I noticed it there this morning and de-spammed it. You might want to be aware that Akismet doesn’t trust you.
In the meantime, I’ll look into the gadgets suggestion, thanks.
Tom, you could look at objectdock from stardock.com to get dock functionality on windows, it’s not the same as on OSX but does improve the windows desktop experience.
http://www.geoshell.com/ – very lightweight, very customisable. I dont use it currently but it can easily do what you want – set normal windows taskbar to minimise and run geoshell as a bar along the top – it has a module to pick up the notification bar icons and a clock module, and a start menu module. Just pick the ones you want. You can replace the windows shell entirely, or run them concurrently.
John – I installed objectdock, thanks. It is a bit cartoonish for my taste but I will play with it and see how I get on, thanks again.
hostyle, this looks like the business. Seriously nice. Excellent suggestion, thanks.
Hi Tom,
I switched to Vista a week ago. If you want to hide the taskbar, you can have a clock in the sidebar (not taskbar!). In the sidebar you can switch each gadget to be transparent in % – from 20 to 100%. You can change between some designs of the clock – it funny. But my favoutite gadget is the web-radio – really great – changing the channels with one click… and always having fine sound.
Sorry, but I forgot to click on “notify me…”
But now it is done.
I felt the same way about object dock. Check out rocketdock, it is nice. I put it on the left side of the screen and set it to autohide, but sometimes it pops up when move the mouse over to the side to click on something else. And the the popup delay doesnt work. But other than that slight inconvenience, it works great, even lets you minimize apps to the dock (although I think object dock does as well).
Regards