ObjectDock is a viable replacement for your Windows taskbar as it shows minimized windows and shows you which apps are running. There are options to optimize for performance or for memory usage.
In use, ObjectDock is incredibly smooth and stable. If you hover over it, the widget will expand with a beautiful animation to reveal a five day forecast. The weather widget is particularly useful, with auto-updating weather for your location. There's also several you can add to the dock. Add as many shortcuts to the dock as you want for easy application launching.
