Taskbar++

Designed for older Windows editions, Taskbar++ is a simple-to-use application that gives you the possibility to reorganize items in your system taskbar with little effort.
Before proceeding any further, you should know that it hasn't received updates for such a long time that it doesn't work on OS versions past Windows XP.

Simple setup and interface

The installation procedure is a speedy job that shouldn't give you any trouble, since there are no special options, mandatory software products or third-party offers involved.
As far as the interface is concerned, Taskbar++ creates an icon in the taskbar notifications area at startup and adopts a large window with a plain look and neatly organized structure.

Customize taskbar preferences

You can pick a two audio tracks with the WAV format to play when it starts and stops sorting items, as well as create a list with applications to take into account for suspending the product's activity during their runtime.
Furthermore, it can be instructed to drag the taskbar buttons smoothly, show hints on the taskbar button, change the text color of taskbar buttons into anything else, set the background color (under XP visual style), as well as fine-tune the icon and text position by tinkering with the horizontal and vertical axis.
It's also possible to hide the tray icon, ask the tool to automatically check for updates at startup, apply a proxy configuration for establishing the Internet connection, log details to file, or switch to another GUI language.

Evaluation and conclusion

It didn't put a strain on the computer's performance in our tests, thanks to the fact that it needed a low amount of CPU and RAM to work properly. No error dialogs popped up and it didn't hang or crash. Too bad that Taskbar++ hasn't been updated for a long time and the project is no longer in development, so it cannot be used on newer Windows models.