IIRC Quick launch was very very easy under XP. With 7 you had to do the detective work you describe plus get rid of the text description for icons plus........ put the quick launch icons in the lower left corner. Just where I like to locate them.
BUT
All worth it! Then with the program pinning feature I kinda have two sets of quick launch icons which is good for mentally organizing your frequently used programs
Then lastly (like I said) I put the entire task bar on auto-hide. 90% of Windows users never do anything like this and I will tell you why>>>>>>>
IIRC Quick launch was very very easy under XP. With 7 you had to do the detective work you describe plus get rid of the text description for icons plus........ put the quick launch icons in the lower left corner. Just where I like to locate them. BUT All worth it! And with W/10, you must also nuke everything to the left, and IIRC this includes the hard to remove Store app. MS did not have the QL users in mind.
Then lastly (like I said) I put the entire task bar on auto-hide. 90% of Windows users never do anything like this and I will tell you why>>>>>>>
Since i frequently go to it, and i need to choose which open document from the pop up preview, or which instance of Firefox from the one icon, then it would take more time. The TB is quite thin as it i due to my resolution and using small icons. MS has fixed the opacity issue of W/8.1 though, and it overall looks better.
