I am a Sharepoint 2010 novice but I have spent considerable time banging through 2010 in recent days and below is information I will need in the future to perform installs at other client sites.  Perhaps you will be interested in some of this.  If you want more of my tips and tricks just type SHAREPOINT in the search, you will find a 3 or 4 more posts from today.

How to Turn Off / Disable / Hide the Left Hand Menu Bar / Nav Pane?

• Click PAGE,
• EDIT,
• INSERT,
• WEBPART,
• MEDIA AND CONTENT,
• CONTENT EDITOR and then click the ADD button,
• then click EDIT WEBPART (on the part you just added)
• click in the text area as if you were going to type (but don’t type anything),
• click HTML (under EDITING TOOLS, FORMAT TEXT, at the bottom right of the ribbon)
• then copy / paste in the code below:

<br />
<style type=”text/css”>
/*–Hide Quick Launch –*/
#s4-leftpanel{
display:none
}
.s4-ca{
margin-left:0px
}
</style>
<p>

Then click the OK button. 

OPTIONAL: In the webpart properties (the settings pane on the extrme right near the top) click APPEARANCE and change the text to something tiny like a period (so people do not notice this CONTENT EDITOR section).

Now wasn’t that easy!?!  I have confirmed with Microsft that they still do not have an eliquent way of turning off that bar.  Rediculous!