On my new quad core i7 imac the dock process is at 200% CPU which indicates to me that it has a couple of the cores sat doing lots of work? Is this normal?
No, it's not. If you're not doing anything, with no applications loaded, then CPU should be near idle.
If you've tried the usual; restarting, relaunching Finder (not sure how that will help, but I'd try anyway) and killing the dock process (then relaunching), then I'm out of ideas.
This forum user was also having similar issues. If you run Parallels, check out the solution he has posted.
Awesome - it was Parallels, it was taking up a whole core for each of the VMs which had their applications shared with the dock. I had 2 out of 4 of mine hence 200% CPU - madness.
Anyway, many thanks to zin for the info, much appreciated.