It's not necessarily better, but it's just "correct." Microsoft has chosen a certain design paradigm, which so happens to be the same as most other windowing systems out there that predate theirs, such as Mac OS and Amiga OS (Workbench), where menus pop down vertically, from a their menu titles, which are first arranged horizontally at the top of the "display" - Window's app-centric display also happens to be the app window, versus The Mac and Amiga's dedicated menu bar. The system's menu or an application's menu is essentially the first thing you see when scanning the display from top to bottom. You know, the same way we read books.

It's actually not so much the task component of the task bar but rather the Start menu that causes the issue. A task-only list could work well on any screen edge, but that Start menu at the bottom, the effective END of the display, and popping the menus upwards, makes about as much sense as holding a paint roller by the roller itself.

It's the first obvious sign that MS had their collective heads way up their asses in trying the most obscure and inane thing to differentiate its then new Windows 95 from the other windowing OSes out there. It shouldn't come as a surprise from a company that names their OS "Windows" in the first place, but it doesn't make it any less wrong.

They should probably have named the menu "END" - but then it wold have been better defaulted to the bottom right instead of bottom left. Maybe they toyed with "Almost End" before giving up.

The first thing I remarked on when seeing a beta of Windows 95 was, WTF is that menu doing at the bottom. The second thing I did was to confirm that it could be moved. If it could not have by default, I think it would have delayed my adoption of Windows and PC hardware in general. I only built my first PC and moved over to an x86 platform when Windows 95 came out. There was simply no reason to do so before that time and I was quite content with my various Amigas.