HyperDock 1.0 brings Windows 7 desktop features to Snow Leopard

Are you looking to combine the best bits of Windows 7's desktop with your Snow Leopard-powered Mac? HyperDock 1.0 aims to fill in the gaps by bringing two of Windows 7's best features -- pop-up thumbnail previews of open windows and programs, and the ability to quickly and easily snap two windows side-by-side on-screen -- to the Mac desktop.

Once installed, the program adds itself to the System Preferences pane, making it possible to bring order back to a cluttered collection of windows simply by rolling your mouse over a program and window icons in the dock. A small pop-up window displays thumbnails of all open windows; select a window to view it full-screen or close it directly from the pop-up.

If you roll the mouse over the iTunes dock icon you'll get a preview of the currently playing song along with a limited number of playback and rating controls; the iCal icon displays a list of upcoming events. Better still, the size and appearance of the thumbnails is completely customizable depending on personal preference, which is a feature not present in Windows 7.

HyperDock also makes it possible to quickly view two windows side-by-side; simply drag one window to the left or right edge of the screen and it'll automatically resize to take up half the desktop; repeat with another window using the opposite edge. Windows can also be resized using a combination of keys and the mouse instead of having to drag window edges.

You can also assign keyboard shortcuts to the Mac OS X Dock or individual icons there, allowing you to quickly and easily hide and quit applications, and open new tabs or windows in others.

HyperDock 1.0 doesn't add any new features present in the last beta release, but is no longer free to use; instead it installs as a 15-day trial version, after which you'll need to pay the small sum of $9.95 to continue using it. One licence is good for all your Macs. It currently only runs on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Sorry, Snow Leopard users, the software is not currently available through the Mac App Store.