> Spotlight - I don't use Dock, sometimes I forget its even there. I would disable it if I could.
While my replacement isn't spotlight (I just use Proxi with a bunch of switch-directly-to-application-X hotkeys), I don't use the Dock either and would disable it if I could do so easily, without losing Dashboard, Spaces, and everything else that runs as part of the Dock process. (Although I actually still use command-M and Witch to minimize and unminimize windows to & from the Dock via the keyboard.)
In Tiger there was a nice hidden preference that allowed you to put it at the top of the screen, under the menu bar, where it would only come out if you really wanted it to (because the mouseover activation row was only one pixel tall and not at the top edge of the screen but rather the bottom edge of the menu bar), and was thus effectively pretty much disabled. Sadly, that option disappeared in Leopard. The best alternative I've found so far is to make the Dock really really tiny -- you can make it smaller than the System Preferences GUI will let you via 'defaults':
While my replacement isn't spotlight (I just use Proxi with a bunch of switch-directly-to-application-X hotkeys), I don't use the Dock either and would disable it if I could do so easily, without losing Dashboard, Spaces, and everything else that runs as part of the Dock process. (Although I actually still use command-M and Witch to minimize and unminimize windows to & from the Dock via the keyboard.)
In Tiger there was a nice hidden preference that allowed you to put it at the top of the screen, under the menu bar, where it would only come out if you really wanted it to (because the mouseover activation row was only one pixel tall and not at the top edge of the screen but rather the bottom edge of the menu bar), and was thus effectively pretty much disabled. Sadly, that option disappeared in Leopard. The best alternative I've found so far is to make the Dock really really tiny -- you can make it smaller than the System Preferences GUI will let you via 'defaults':