@kalessin: Well, hot damn! You learn something new everyday. Thanks for the tip. I had to enable the menu item since there is only one user on my account but it is there now and very useful. Thanks.

I still like the Dashlock concept though.

@narin: surely you can just go to the user menu on the menu bar and select "Login Window"? No extra software or tweaking required.

And of course, a few minutes later I learn about this:
http://whatdoiknow.org/archives/000957.shtml

So now we can choose to clutter up either the menu bar or the dashboard ;)

I was very surprised to learn that OS-X doesn't have a built-in method to lock the screen! So this widget does the job quite well. Could just use a smidgen of graphics/animation improvement.

This is a great widget! I discovered this a few days ago and now use it all of the time when I'm at work and need to leave my desk for a few minutes.