All valid points.
The dock was one of the things I liked about OS X. Much better, IMO, than the taskbar in windows. Then windows 7 sort of copied the idea of the dock in OS X. And made it better. I now prefer it to the mac's dock.
I'd probably have more to say if I did anything of consequence on my laptops but if all you do is surf the web and instant message, almost any OS can handle that pretty competently. Even most of the stuff I posted above is minor or a matter of adjusting.
