I keep mine to the right and down. Originally, I wanted to do this to keep the trash can inthe same place. Now I like it because things grow upward from a fixed point rather than out fromt he middle. Another question is, what do you keep in your dock as opposed to not? I have found that there are very few apps that I keep when they are not running. That way I can tell at a glance if I'm running a bunch of stuff because my dock is full. (I use LaunchBar to, um, Launch things.)