Vertical has always been much wider than the horizontal layout is tall, at least when using the small taskbar icons setting. However the third-party utility 7+ Taskbar Tweaker allows narrower vertical taskbars, which actually makes the vertical orientation ideal if placed on the left-hand side (the least interacted with edge of a desktop, ie: less likely to be accidentally interacted with).
I can't believe he wrote a whole article on the usability of footnotes, using footnotes, on a site without links to return from the footnote back to where it was used.