I did the same for our sharepoint implementation.

The top  Nav is defined in the master page. The top level design of master page
has 4 HTML table rows. By default, Top nav  is present in the 3rd row and Quick
launch in the 4th.

Just cut the Top Nav control
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderHorizontalNav" runat="server">
........................
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>
from the 3rd row and put it in the 4th row along with the quick  launch which
is
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderLeftNavBarDataSource" runat="server" />
........................
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

You can either remove the quick launch  control if you don't need or hide it
(with HTML attributes).

Will this keep the other admin functions intact?

Also, where do the flyouts  go when the menu  is on the side? Still below?

Also, change the value of Orientation from Horizontal to Vertical. This would
make it look and behave(even fly outs) like quick  launch.

Was able to move  the top  menu control over to the quick  launch area, but
am not able to remove the quick launch  control..

Can you please tell me how?

so I was able to finally get rid of the quicklaunch control, but I
cannot seem to get this master page  inherited by any of the sub sites
that I have created..

I know that this can be done in site  settings of the subsite, yet I
cannot seem to make it work.

Is there something I am doing wrong?

Our initial investigation also told that making to work the inherting feature of
master pages to sub sites  was difficult. So, we changed the default.master at
the master page  gallery, replacing our new file on the existing file. In this
way, we didn't touch the 12 Hive and got the functionality  that we needed.

That only works for the one site.

I believe this works for the whole site  collection. I will check once and let
you know again.

My understanding is.... By default, the top  level site of the site collection
is set to use default.master and the sub sites  are set to use the parents master
page. So, we are not touching both of these settings but updating the
default.master in the gallery with our custom version.

This only works if the top  level site  is a Publishing Site. If the Top
level site is a Team site with no publishing the master page  is not
inherited. Inheritance of the System Master and Site Master settings is
a Content Management capability.

This only works if the top  level site  is a Publishing Site. If the Top
level site is a Team site with no publishing the master page  is not
inherited. Inheritance of the System Master and Site Master settings is
a Content Management capability.

Only if the top-level site  in the Site Collection is a publishing site.

we did our implementation with the publishing site  and are able to
achieve the master page  inheritance. So, I thought that this applicable for all
the types of site collections. Good to know that it is applicable only for the
publishing site.

Inheritance of Master pages only works when the Top Level site  is a
Publishing Site. Otherwise you would need to edit the Master page  in
the Master Page Gallery of each site. Or create and implement a custom
Master Page without using SharePoint Designer. See my Blog post here on
how to create a Custom Master Page that is activated by using a Feature:

mindsharpblogs.com/.../1903.aspx

Are you using a Publishing site  as the top-level site in your Site
Collection? They are the only kind that inherit the master page  to sub
sites.

So is this why you can add top  bar links on a my site  that are linked to
subsites in a portal and retain navigation? How does that work across those two
site collections?

no, collaborative portal..perhaps if I turn on the publishing feature though?