Is there a way to remove the right-pane on the start menu?

[ハイドン]

The title says it all!

I'm looking for a way to completely remove the right-hand pane from the Windows 7 start menu (Though I'd be willing to guess that any solution for Vista might also work). My reasons for doing this are that I have completely removed all the text from the pane, yet it now just shows an empty space with the user picture at the top and the shutdown button at the bottom. This is for a small netbook which has limited screen real estate, hence my desire to remove a seemingly unnecessary item. Is there a way to do this, via registry hack or anything like that?

Thanks,

Note: Image was taken from wikipedia and quickly edited. It's not my actual system.

Edited January 26, 2009 by ハイドン