start button + vertical taskbar

Hi everybody,

I'm planning to buy a new laptop, and I'm facing the choice: Win 7 or Win 8?...

Now, I would be happy to give the latest Windows a try, but the lack of decent start-menu quite turns me off... Ok, there seems to be the promising Start8 to fix it, but... IS IT POSSIBLE TO GET THE TASKBAR together with the Start8 button arranged vertically? (There is no evidence of it on the screenshots I've seen...)

(indeed, as the screen ratios become wide and wider, it makes not much sense to dock all the icons, including the Start8 button, on the bottom of a 16:9 or 16:10 panel, especially not when you're dealing with text and you're trying to get 2 pages displayed side by side: that's why many people prefer to display the taskbar on the left vertical edge of the screen...)

Thanks for your enlightments...

--Tony