The icon bar or Launcher can be tailored to suit your needs, if you are
using 11.10. You can drag and drop icons onto it, rearrange them, remove
them, and change the tool tips. It autohides and is not in your way. I
quite like it. If you are using 11.04 then you are stuck with it as it is.
You cannot change the size in 11.10 or move it but that will change with
12.04. The top panel is not changeable. That as to do with GNOME 3 and not
even Mint could change that, so they added one to the bottom so you have
two panels, the GNOME Shell one and the one on the bottom that you can
change. GNOME Shell has a side launcher as well, but it is not as flexible,
yet.

You can add a menu to the top panel of Ubuntu if you prefer that to Dash. I
had one, but removed it because I got used to Dash and found myself always
going there to using the menu. It is whatever you get used to. Now I
consider myself well adapted to Unity and GNOME shell and would not
consider returning to a GNOME 2 interface. Yuck!

The big change that I have made to Unity is the removal of the global menu.
Once that was done I was a happy camper. The biggest problem I has with the
global menu was using something like the GIMP wich has windows or
having multiple windows of the file manager open. I was forever having to
shift focus by clicking and travelling the mouse way too far. I have lost
track of how many times I have inadvertently closed the wrong application.
So I just did away with the global menu.