Still, I think Expose is good enough. I mapped the show desktop command to one of the buttons on the mouse so it isn’t really much of a hassle. :)

I used to use the multiple desktop feature when I was a linux bum. I was about |–| close to installing VirtueDesktops until I realized that Leopard’s ’spaces’ will do pretty much exactly the same thing. But then again, who knows when Leopard is going to be out, so it might be advantageous for me to install it now and worry about uninstalling it later.

To be honest the one thing that I missed was the ability to lock the computer with a simple key press (win-L) but I found a utility that appears to let you enable that functionality on OSX (since I’ve not got my mac yet I can’t test but it looks promising) - Winswitch - which amongst other things let you set a hotkey to take you to the fast user switch screen, effectively locking the machine until a password is input.

When I was in college living in the dorms I would use that keystroke to lock my computer from pranks. I haven’t had a need for locking my computer since then. Shift Apple Q brings up the dialog to log off the current user. This command will put you one click away from the log on screen. Winswitch seems even quicker though and its free, which is sweet as well!

Simply select finder and hit Command-option-H, or
click in the finder while holding option, or
control-option click on the finder icon in the dock and select hide others!

You could write a simple applescript to do what you want and place it in the dock to hide all other apps in one click if you want!

Cheers!

Holding down the option key and clicking on the finder icon in the dock does the trick! Even though it brings up the finder I still like the simplicity of your method :)