Tabbed Docks, CC and thans

Hello, as a newcomer I wonna thanks you all (staff for handling all these problems and Bichur for his quick helps). Now, I am fairly familiar (igitt, a living 60+ ) with stardock - I do have some general queries:

1) will there be a replacement of Tabbed-Dock, or what is the recommandation ?

2) having looked around for virtual-desktop solution, all I got were dissatisfaction and expenses (hum-hum)

3) as I tend to use my compis in a more prod way (meaning not games) - is this still a place for the next couple of years or goes the trend here to "full games" ?

4) coming back to "tabbed docks". my personal thinking is, that this is a great way to handle overcrowded desktops. However, as mentioned in other places, it would need some facelift. I believe, most people would't dare to throw a dime in for this.

 5) what does vista offer for this? (but, even so, I would prefer to be independent and switch quickly to linux or firefox-op-system (?!).  cheers, walt