If you right-click the taskbar and select properties you can choose the grouping behavior from Always, When Full or Never. You can also change the size of the taskbar buttons to small if you don't prefer the default.
You can turn off the combining but you can't turn off the grouping. (unless 8 reverted what vista/7 did)
Also annoying is that your only options are 'combine, without text' and 'don't combine, with text'. Why is windows so fond of using one toggle where there should be multiple toggles?
