Top or bottom works for me, but I prefer the top so voted that way.

(grin) I stopped using desktop icons 10 years ago, even before I started using Linux. In my world, they are a waste of space that hides my pretty background pictures.

I think it's just a matter of personal preference, and what works for one person may not work for another.

I keep the KDE taskbar panel at the bottom, with auto hide. I like to keep it off the screen and out of my sight for the most part, but easily accessible when I need it.

Depends
 

When using a Win OS, I find that the taskbar works best at the bottom. The top or either side always posed the problem of potential missteps. Using Mint, I prefer the panel at the top.

Depends, sometimes I feel like a not

http://oi49.tinypic.com/33a8936.jpg

Sometimes I do

http://oi39.tinypic.com/29llnbt.jpg

Sometimes I just go crazy

http://oi41.tinypic.com/fxglx.jpg

on the display, of course. :)

Top panel always visible, bottom panel on autohide.

Ditto, and not productive at all. Too much moving around:s

I prefer vertical and autohide.

Bottom panel
 

I have gotten used to the panel on the bottom, and that is most comfortable to me. However, with certain applications, the bottom panel is in the way. The solution for me was to put 'hide' buttons on both the top panel and the bottom panel. I generally hide the top panel then on startup using the 'hide' button. On occasion, though, I might have to hide the bottom panel.... easy enough with the 'hide' button. Then I can unhide either the top or the bottom panel as needed.
I have most of my most used panel widgets placed on the bottom panel, such as workspace switcher, main menu, logout, calculator, weather, date/time, etc. The only ones I have on the top panel are notification, date/time, and main menu.
I suppose I should have voted "other," as I actually have two. But since the top panel is almost always hidden, and I could get along just fine without it, I voted for the bottom. The 'hide/un-hide' buttons are very unobtrusive, so they aren't a problem. I don't especially like the 'auto-hide' feature as it is prone to adverse reactions if/when your mouse gets quirky.
Sadly, Gnome 2xx is history. But Mate will do till something better comes along. I do NOT mean to disparage Mate, nor the fine work done by the Mate developers. But, truthfully, Mate is a very good Gnome-2xx-wannabe. So, the panel from Mate, either top or bottom, with nearly all of the panel widgets previously available with the Gnome 2xx panel works very well for me. And my computer challenged wife hardly knows the difference between Gnome 2xx and Mate.

I've got a statusbar at the bottom. No icons - all done through keybindings.

Hi there,

all Windows versions since 4 (95/98, NT4) had it like that, not only the bastards Windows 6 (Vista) and its successors.

In Windows, I used to have a two-row taskbar at the bottom. Two rows, because there was too much that just "had to be there": The Start button, the Quick Launch icons, the actual task bar, the notification area, and clock and calendar in the right-hand corner.

After migrating to Ubuntu, then Mint, I got used to placing one panel at the bottom (the main menu and the task bar) and one at the top (Launcher icons, notification icons, clock and calendar with current weather stats).

If I had to use a widescreen monitor, which I avoid as long as I can (I'm glad I have a high resolution 4:3 display), I'd consider placing the panels left and right to compensate for the nasty over-wide display proportions. It could be difficult to get used to that, but sounds reasonable to me.

[X] Doc CPU

Taskbar at the bottom. I'm just used to it being there on all my systems now, so it helps avoid confusion and makes things simpler.

I use fvwm2 and (I suppose) have a conceptually different view of the world than UIs modelled after windoze, but when I started using wide screens, I found it much more convenient to move the 'stuff' I previously had at the bottom of the screen to the LHS of the screen. I didn't find it took any time to get used to.

I spent a bit of time playing around with other window managers, because fvwm2 does not work around a focus bug exhibited by (some) Java guis. What I did discover is that (it seems) a lot of other WMs do not really like putting their taskbar/pagers/icons/what-have-you on the side, even though they let you do it. (There is a variety of problems, including text that is rotated 90 degrees, inability to pick appropriate sizes or aspect ratios of gui items, etc.) Admittedly, perhaps someone with expertise in any one of those WMs would know how to set it up nicely.

Cheers.

I usually accept the default location from each distro.

But I prefer it at the bottom because I'm used to it from my early days of using windows. And is my vote s well.