With college work, I need several windows open at a time and found it pretty annoying clicking the icon and then have to scroll through the list and click on the window I needed open. I did some looking and found you can unstack the taskbar buttons so they are all lined out like in previous OS systems.
I use stacked, due to the nature of all the stuff I have open at any given time. I think the combine option that Windows 7, and I think Windows 8 uses is one of the best things Microsoft has done in a very long time with the UI, since it makes moving around without alt-tabbing pretty easy. Even easier than using your taskbar would to be to learn to get used to alt-tabbing through all of your stuff. It's a lot faster if you know what you're looking for to do that instead of clicking on your taskbar for an open program and bring it to the foreground.
I like all spread out, but I usually just have one Window of each program open at the same time because I don't like having my Taskbar full of buttons since it makes my Taskbar look messy.
Indeed, it is easy to bring things up. A lot of programs like web browsers and some Office suites like Lotus Symphony by IBM have tabs instead of Windows which make it easier, and faster for people to browse multiple websites, documents, and spreadsheets within one window/program.
