>Right-Click taskbar, select Properties and checkmark "Show Small Icons in Start Menu". I always have them small, but like before I never ran any metrics, just my preference.

I have always kept them small. As for the taskbar's icons, Windows is again set for the worst possible defaults - whenever I added a toolbar, it started with title, with large icons, with icon titles, and for each one of those I had to surf through the rightclick menu... couldn't they have put just a little modal form with three checkboxes, to be called from a Toolbar Properties line in the rightclick menu or when a new toolbar is added.

Never mind, it's in the past :).