For your complaints about the taskbar, yes I too find it incredibly annoying that they compress all the application windows into a tiny thumbnail but there is a setting to expand thumbnails to include titles and separate them if there are multiple windows which is what I use. I don't currently have access to my windows machine or I'd help you out with the exact setting but it's there somewhere in the "taskbar settings"
Thanks very much. But it doesn't sound like that would help. First, I doubt a giant network path would fit in the title of a thumbnail.
Second, I want to give focus to the entire application at once. ALL of its windows need to be brought to the foreground at once.