I use a vertical task bar on KDE and a vertical task bar on Windows at work. It's such a huge productivity boost. First, I can see WAY more window previews at one time than before. And second, I can use text to tell the windows apart. 5 Excel workbooks open? No problem, they each have a name. No more clicking on one icon and then squinting at window previews to see which one you need.
And as someone who actually lived through the "IE is the standard, deal with it" - age, I refuse to use any Chromium based browser out of principle. We need more actually viable engines in use or Google will just keep dictating what's allowed on the internet by the fact that Chrome has something like 90% market share on desktop browsers.