you can remove the left bar by deleting it's section from desktop.conf. I don't like it because then the windows menu doesn't appear on left side.
of course, be careful with changes in the layout, you can easily crash the desktop and may not be able to boot, and you will have to reflash.

seems funny compares to what happend to me:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=446485