The taskbar sure is handy for quickly accessing your favourite programs and files, but did you know you could also use it to create a jump list of important information, such as phone numbers?

Windows: The Windows taskbar autohide feature is controlled with your mouse. If you prefer to use your keyboard, Taskbar Control lets you hide and unhide the taskbar with a hotkey.

Windows: Heavy multitaskers will know that when you open enough windows, things get messy. TaskSpace makes things a little lighter by putting multiple windows together into one container.

Hearing the words "extra toolbars" may make you squirm in fear, but a few Lifehacker readers show us how handy Windows' built-in taskbar toolbars can be.

The Start menu may be gone (if recoverable) in Windows 8, but you don't care -- you have a taskbar full of your most commonly used apps. Here are three tips to help leep your taskbar as organised and powerful as possible.

Windows: If you're worried that some application may be eating into your bandwidth in the background, or you just want to keep closer tabs on the bandwidth your computer is using, NetSpeedMonitor is a handy systray utility that lives in your taskbar. It shows you active upload and download speeds, which applications are using your network connection and what their endpoints are.

For quick and convenient access to your favourite programs or folders, pin them to the taskbar in Windows or the dock on Mac. Here's how to set this up so you're just one click away from what you use most.

Windows: SimpleSndVol adds balance controls to the volume control popup you get when you click on the sound icon in the Windows systray. The utility also allows you to bind volume and balance controls to keyboard shortcuts for quick access.

Windows 7 only: New service Pokki wants to be an app store for Windows, complete with painless one-click installs and real-time notifications in the taskbar.

Quick Access Bar is a handy (and free) utility for Windows that provides you with a collapsible second taskbar containing commonly used folders of your choice. If you've got a desktop filled with folders, it provides a handy way to stay organised while still maintaining easy access to your stuff.

Windows 7: Use the middle-click button on your mouse and the taskbar to open a new window for an application or quickly close a window. Here's how.

Windows: From the creators of Fences comes Bins, which is basically the Windows 7 equivalent of the "Stacks" feature in Mac OS X. If you want to organise your taskbar's program icons into little convenient bins, this download is for you.

If you use Hotmail (and it does stack up a lot better than it used to and are running IE9, here's a handy feature: pin Hotmail to the Windows 7 taskbar and you'll get an automatically updated message count.

We love how productive Windows 7's jumplists can make us, but some applications don't have as many options as we'd like in the jumplist. Free program Jumplist Extender lets you add nearly any action to a program's jumplist with ease.

If you need to get something done by constantly feel bombarded by distractions around your computer, there's no need to block programs from running — you can just shut down your taskbar so you can't reach them.

Your taskbar/dock are the places you pin your most frequently used applications. The contents may not be your favourite software, but the titles are often the most important. What do you pin to your taskbar or dock and why?

Searching the web (and performing other tasks) from your browser's address bar is handy, but what if your browser is closed or minimised? Here's how to quickly search the web from the search bar in Windows 7's Start menu.

When you browse the web in a maximised window (say, if you're on a small monitor or netbook), you give up your ability to drag items, like images, to the desktop. Reader huh989 shows us how to easily get that feature back.

We've shown you one way to pin anything to your Windows 7 taskbar, but if you'd rather not install extra software, you can pin a document to your taskbar using Windows' built-in Task Scheduler.