I've covered the dock on my mac and how I use it before, but I've changed a little since then and since good old Giles Turnbull has done a bit on it, I through it was time to revisit the subject.
So do I like and or use the Dock? Well not really, like Giles I keep the dock to a small size and keep it hidden on the right side of my screen. I don't really use it for anything at all to be brutally honest, mostly I think it's there for show!
Quicksilver handles all of my app launching needs and increasingly is taking over for other tasks to. I've got spotlight to find things for me. The built in apple-tab key combo and the alt-tab combo from witch give me all the app and window switching I need. Any thing else that the dock might do for me is handled by PathFinder.
So for a man that dosen't really use the dock at all, why I have I got 23 icons on it? (view the picture here) Well like I said it mostly there to show off the programs I use regularly. We have (from top to bottom) PathFinder, Safari (beta 3!), Mail, NetNewsWire, iTerm, Cha-ching, Scrivener, Montage, WriteRoom, Journler, Yojimbo, Aqumacs emacs, TextMate, BBEdit, iTunes, OminiOutliner pro, RapidWaver, HP device manager and iPulse, phew! Three text editors, yes I know it's over kill, but see this for my reasons
Virtually every app in the dock will get fired up at least once a week, most get daily use. Although iTerm is rapidly being replaced by the terminal in Pathfinder so that icon might go soon. And just recently I disabled Quickslivers icon, I'd do the same for iPulse to, if I had that option!
The only thing that some times get lunched from the dock is the HP device manager, when I need to do some scanning, I get more choice doing things that way, rather than just putting something in the scanner. The rest of the time the dock stays hidden (but I do use the zoom effect on it, mainly just to show off again).
One point mentioned in the article and the comments is the use of the menu bar for notifications etc. I keep this area very clean and empty, beyond the standard apple icons (minus the language switcher, what use is that to me an speaker of only one language?) is the icon for nocturne, the cool new app from the maker of quicksilver. It switches the screen colours to black and white and inverts them for a high contrast look. It can be used on laptops for outside use, but I use it to help me to sleep after long late night sessions on my machine, the dimmer screen helps me go to sleep when I finally fall in to bed!
So thats my current line up on the dock and why I don't use it (much) :}