Oh, overrated Objectdock.

Heard through the grapevine that the new Objectdock (version 1.9) was the bomb? Alright – sure, it’s a definite improvement over the completely abysmal previous version (which was sluggish, a resource hog, and so on). But, I do hope Objectdock 2, whenever it is debuting, improves its speed even more (shouldn’t be too hard).

Alright, so maybe I’m being a bit hard on Objectdock. After all, there are pretty few programs out there that emulate – well – an object dock. The more “underground” ones would be RocketDock (not bad at all – very fast) and Y’z Dock (after a lawsuit from Apple, it has been deemed illegal – but like all illegal things, you can find it easily on Google).

What the heck is Objectdock, and why would you need it? Objectdock’s basically a program that emulates the object dock that the Mac is popular for. When you hover your mouse over it, it’s icons zoom to your liking (customizable), and when you click it, then it performs its function (either displays information or opens a shortcut, usually). As for why you need it (or why I need it) – that’s a question I’m still trying to find an answer for. Asides from eye-candy, it’s pretty much useless (all the shortcuts you’ll ever need are in your start menu, in my humble opinion).

And Objectdock clearly doesn’t do the job as well as Mac OS X’s native object dock does. I found it slowing my system when I tried enabling the thumbnails of minimized windows. But, asides from that, it isn’t too bad (I haven’t found myself using it much though – I’m just not used to it being there).

The weather widget is possibly the only thing I found useful and interesting. A single click brings out a series of five boxes that display the weather forecasts ranging from today to a few days later. Useful? You betcha. But, I’m still going to have to double check with the Weather Network site.

I’ve seen quite a few users say that the locations of Objectdock are much more customizable this time around. And that is true – but I haven’t found myself needing to change the default settings too often.

SO, is this version of Objectdock an improvement over the last one? It most certainly is. But is it worth putting on your computer? I can’t say with too much confidence that it is. In fact, I think I’m going to be getting rid of it. Maybe Objectdock 2 will be the one that impresses me.