Does Win7 have a dock Toolbar?

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Hi,
I’ve got a Lenovo laptop with Windows7 Ultimate 64 bit. It was prepared for me and Windows was loaded by a local computer store which prefers to clean out for their customers much of the extraneous stuff normally found loaded on new computers. Good for lightening the load, but very confusing for my first ever look at Windows 7.

My friend just bought a Dell laptop, Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bit. Her setup is quite different so that it doesn’t resemble my setup at all. She has a dock/toolbar/or whatever on near the top of her desktop containing her IE icon, some tools, games, music, a link to uninstall some of the trial software, etc., a total of about 7 or 8 icons, all contained within this dock or toolbar.

Is this something that is a normal part of Windows 7 or is this something Dell has installed that I might create a similar one on mine? I find no reference to a dock in searching Windows7. Thanks. Judy

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It look like you have a cleaner setup, but you can download extras, like this. Also check your “gadgets” by right clicking on an empty window>>gadgets.

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DELL installs a dock just as you describe on many models of their computers before shipment. Mine is listed as Dell Dock v2.00 by Stardock Corporation. I use mine every day. It’s a great productivity enhancement. I’m not aware of a dock that is included with WIN 7.

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Clint and Steve, you guys are great. To get such perfect answers right away! Way to go!

This is absolutely what my friend has on her Dell. The link is very helpful. Will get to work on that on mine right away. Thanks so very much, both of you. Judy

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Just remember that all this extra stuff consumes resources. Be prepared for your PC to operate somewhat slower. I used a different approach which does something similar without utilizing another app running in the background. I created a folder, lets call it Shortcuts in My Documents. I created shortcuts to all apps I plan to use regularly in this new folder. I then went to the taskbar, right clicked chose toolbars, then create new toolbar. I pointed the new shortcut to the Shortcuts folder I created and voila, there is shortcuts toolbar pointing to all my common apps directly on my taskbar.

As you can see on the attachment I have both a Shortcuts and Links toolbar on my taskbar. Click on the >> to open the toolbar and select what you want. The contents of the Shortcuts folder is also shown. As you can see, you can add any number of shortcuts to apps in this folder.

If you want to add more shortcuts in the Shortcuts folder, you can right click on the Shortcuts toolbar and select Open Folder, add whatever shortcuts you want, then close the folder. When you click on >> next time you will see the new shortcuts. Simple.

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Another nice thing of using the toolbar option in taskbar is you can also add the desktop toolbar to the task bar so every shortcut put on the desktop when installing software etc is listed in this toolbar.

You can then right click on desktop and untick “Show desktop Icons” giving a nice icon free desktop to view your wallpaper as it was meant to be.

Hope this useful.
Clive

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That’s one of the big reasons I use the Shortcuts toolbar I use, I like to see my desktop. I have it rotating through all the landscapes included with Win 7 and then some. I love it.

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More good advice. Thanks so very much. What to try first? Judy

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