I suppose if they are not auto hidden I can see how they could be intrusive. However, with auto hide on I'm am not sure how they could be considered intrusive. 
 
Nor do understand people that "hate" an OS. 

I put my Taskbar on the top and have Auto Hide on (and have since Win 95). It seems very odd to me that almost all applications have their menus on the top but the Taskbar by default is on the bottom. Odd. It does take some getting used to but after 20 years or so I pretty much have it wired...
 
I was in a management meeting back in the 90's and one of the managers asked me why I had it up on top. I replied: "I like to think that I'm raising the bar." 
 
I should add probably that I am very anal about my desktop. I don't have a single short cut there and really don't want to see the Taskbar unless I am launching an app or activating something already opened. I also have a custom toolbar in the Taskbar where I keep all my favorite applications. I hardly ever use the 'Start' button.
 
Regards,

John
I suppose if they are not auto hidden I can see how they could be intrusive. However, with auto hide on I'm am not sure how they could be considered intrusive. 
 
Nor do understand people that "hate" an OS. 

I DO have them auto hidden.  But when I swipe my cursor over the lower area...such as to zoom in, in track view...the task bar will pop up.  Same with the scroll bar in the console view.  When I go to "slide" the channels over, the taskbar again pops up, rendering the controls for Sonar useless.  In fact, I have to click somewhere else on the screen for the taskbar to disappear again.
With the Win8 taskbar on the top...I run into conflict with the Sonar taskbar.  And then of course on the sides, items that share the same space again. 
If I had a choice, I'd like the taskbar OFF and if needed, like CakeAlexS says....hit WIN + T to bring it into view.

To be honest.... Same here. It's been an age old problem... Cheers...

So...feature request to MS?  ;-D   It's not THAT bad...but I'd say it happens enough to be annoying.  I'm finding the only solution really is to lock the taskbar and thus giving up Sonar real estate.  I *try* cramming it up top...but it seems like I'm batting left handed (being a rightie!) with it up there in the atmosphere.
 
the lesser of evils is to pick one of the monitors...typically the track view.... and lock it at the bottom and only use one taskbar.  That way my 2nd monitor for console view gets full glory.

You can take a screen shot of just the active window with alt-prtsctn, at least in all versions pre 8

gustabo
I personally hate the UI in Win8.1 so I use Classic Shell.

I am with you 100%!!  Win 8 was created assuming folks never used another operating system.  Except for an occasional occurrance the WIn 8/8.1 UI is pretty well hidden when using Classic Shell 

removed: posted in wrong thread
 

I'm toying with keeping it locked and losing the screen estate. Auto hide is such a pain when you need to click something in the area which activates it. I've tried having the task bar on the bottom, top, left and right and all of them are problematic. I settled upon the top as the least problematic position, but the problem is there appears to be a Windows bug whereby new windows sometimes appear with their top edge "stuck" under the task bar when it's positioned at the top, and they only pop out if you resize the window a little bit. I've probably described that terribly, I'm not at my computer. But it's frequently a problem for me when opening VST's for the first time.

The taskbar has been included in Windows since win 95 known as the quick launch. There was a sort of a taskbar in Windows 1. It seems to me its time to get used to it.