First - a sound dock is a unit into which you place your iPod. A sound dock does two things (at least) - it amplifies the sound just as a traditional hi-fi would, and it powers / recharges your iPod as it plays. This unit lifts your iPod from personal portable music player into a home sound system. With a sound dock you can have all of your music at hand and enjoyable in any room of the house.
Some sound docks add extra facilities such as an inbuilt radio or an alarm clock, but leaving these trinkets aside which sound dock should you go for?
Lets look at three typical uses - a great sound for serious listening, a portable device perhaps for your holiday home and a device for a tough environment such as a kitchen or a teenagers room.
Serious Sound Docks
We can mention many names but there’s one that dominates all others in this area - Bose.
Boses’ SoundDock is the device most people buy, it’s probably the unit you’ve heard in friends homes, in hotels, shops and restaurants. The sound is generally
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hought to be excellent and thanks to Bose’s design you get great stereo sound from a single box, so you don’t have to trail leads along to one or two speakers. 
Klipsch
Constructed in a very similar way to Bose is the Klipsch range, top of which is the Roomgroove. Your iPod nestles in a small bay at the front with speakers at the rear.
One key feature sets the Klipsch range apart - that’s its inbuilt ability to create its own private wireless network that will stream music round your home from one Roomgroove to another. You can also attach one unit to your computer (either directly or perhaps by an Apple Airport Express) and you can enjoy all your computer’s music in the home plus access internet radio. Klipsch is certainly less well known than Bose but its worth considering as an alternative, at competitive prices. Units are available from Amazon.
Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin
If you know the name you’ll not be surprised by the design on this system. It’s significantly more expensive than either the Bose or Klipsch, but it has a unique and very modern style. I’ve only listened to these in Apple stores but to my ears they sound superb. Although I’m no style guru I love the shiny chrome arm that your
Sounds in Second Home
The first option is simply replicate your serious music investment, as outlined above.
Another option might be to go for a truly portable device. Bose make a version of their SoundDock that is portable. The little platform at the front that the iPod sits in rotates for safety in transit, you get a rechargeable battery and carry handle so this is a unit you can enjoy at home then pick up and take with you when you go away.
Klipsch offer a range including lower cost models with similar functionality that you could leave in place.
JBL make a range of iPod docks some of which are small enough to consider to be portable. I like their reasonably priced On Stage range which now includes a micro
Kitchen / Teenage Room
Hostile environments, and probably areas where you don’t want to make the biggest investment yet want a unit that will last. In this category JBL comes to mind, not least due to their plastic wipe clean bodies. Klipsch goes down to some aggressively priced units, albeit lacking the networking functions, presently being offered at discount on Amazon.
Logitech offer several units at reasonable prices, as does Sony. Looking at the Apple Store you can also find docking stations with radios that might suit a kitchen, and an external input jack would enable a teenager to connect to their computer to enjoy internet radio or streaming sound from MySpace or YouTube.
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