I've just gone through the same as you are describing, I tried pivot pro, etc without good results also pivot pro requires quite a bit of resources.
There is however a compromise in that you can use mame32 to play the games but a seperate frontend to select them.
I use 3D Arcade as a front end and have it autoload on start up.
http://3darcade.mameworld.net/You can set it up so that all of the menus are in vertical mode, the down side to this is that it does take some setting up but it has been well worth the effort.