I wish there was one of these Start replacement programs that expanded the functionality instead of just giving back what Microsoft has taken from us. How about a Taskbar that auto-hides but only after a certain amount of time? How about a Taskbar that expands to show additional rows when you have a lot of windows open and hides itself when you don't?

It has some other features, I just don’t need them. I was perfectly happy with the Windows taskbar as it was, all that was missing was a sane position for it, as, unlike the MS devs, I do not have a portrait monitor (at least that’s the only¹ reason I can think of for forcing people to use a horizontal taskbar).

¹: Yes, that’s hyperbole.

What about top

The one thing I miss about Vista is the ability to have the whole My Computer menu bar across the top of your desktop.

Yeah, works as well. But IIRC most taskbar replacements support that.