I use a left-side taskbar at work. Its excellent when you're running lots of Chrome windows or similar where the title bar text is useful. In the default bottom position, applications are quickly compressed so you cannot see the title, but as text runs left-right, the task bar can display far more items whilst preserving the title. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I thoroughly recommend it.

On my personal machine I rarely have duplicate windows, so I can rely on the icons.