mactips:

I’m always amazed when I see people using the Dock on the bottom of their screen. With all the current Macs having wide screens, there’s more space left-to-right than top-to-bottom.

…[snip]…

This is a good tip, and anyone who is interested in having their dock on the left should visit the original post for the Terminal commands.

With that said, there are a few things I’ve never been able to figure out:

1. Why would anyone not use the auto-hide function for the dock?
2. Why would anyone who does use the auto-hide function want their dock on the left or right?

1. By leaving your dock always showing, you’re constantly wasting valuable screen real-estate.  “But I keep it very very small!” you might say, but my counter to that is that when the dock icons are too small, they almost become useless, as you have to carefully move your mouse along to make sure you click the right icon.  No one wants to accidentally launch Photoshop when they’re trying to open Preview, simply because the icons were next to each other but so small you mis-clicked.  Additionally, a small dock lessens the functionality of any app that places a badge on its dock icon (mail apps, torrent apps, IM apps, etc.).  What good are those badges if you can’t quickly and easily read them?

2. OK, great, you’ve got auto-hiding turned on!  Now tell me why the hell you have your dock pinned to the left/right edge of your screen?  The shortest path to your dock is almost always to move your mouse to the top or bottom of your screen.  As almost all computer displays are now widescreen, and resolutions are constantly increasing, this becomes even more true.

</rambling about the dock>