Winstep Nexus is a free, stylish and eye-catching Windows dock that provides speedy access to all your favourite applications.

The program is supremely easy to use, and can be improving your PC life within seconds of installation. Tell Winstep Nexus to display running apps in the dock, for instance (right-click the Nexus icon, click Tasks, check "Show running applications in this dock") and you'll see an icon for every program running right now. These can be grouped, or not; you can customise the icons, or exclude particular apps from the list; and it's even possible to create custom actions that will occur when you click each icon. You might middle-click an icon to close that application, for example.

Adding other apps to the dock is as easy as dragging and dropping a shortcut from the desktop or Start menu. And you can also drag and drop icons within the dock to rearrange them.

You also get some useful gadgets, including a CPU and RAM monitor, a weather tool, email checker, screen capture option and more.

And Winstep Nexus includes a huge number of customisation options. You get complete control over fundamentals, like dock icon sizes, spacing and more; there are 19 bundled themes, with many others available; a lengthy list of mouseover and click effects including blurs, ripples and reflections; a selection of sound schemes, and more.

Please note, Winstep also produces a more advanced Nexus Ultimate version of the dock that includes additional features. It allows you to create multiple docks, sub and tabbed docks, for instance; can display the contents of folders like the desktop or Control Panel in tabs; can display the system tray in a dock, and more. Prices start at $24.95 and you may order from the Winstep site.