Is it though? At that point you’re trading a little extra height for slightly reduced width.

I’ve always tweaked my systems to keep taskbar icons centered. My mouse is often in the center of the screen, so that’s the shortest travel distance. Starts to make even more sense as you go up to ultrawide and ultra ultrawide.

I digress, at the end of the day user choice is kind and it’s lame that it was taken away in the first place. Especially when they stripped out the registry tweak that still made it possible for the first few years.