Weird Desktop Toolbar

I bought a new Sony Vaio SR a couple of days ago and just received it today, everything is great except for an extremely obnoxious bar on the desktop, and I have no idea if it's something installed by Sony, or if it's a Windows 7 thing. I would just like it to be gone.

You can't right click it to bring up a menu, and image in the top right corner just shrinks it down and allows you to move it. But you can't drag it into the recycle bin or anything. And to make things better: you can only add stuff to it, you can't drag things out.

Attached is an image of it, if anyone has any idea.

 

Those 5 icons are the preconfigured function settings when in a certain mode. Hit the " mode " button on the barrel hinge and you can cycle through the 3 pre-named settings listed as home, office, and on the go. When you click the " setting " button on the barrel hinge it will bring up the VAIO Mode Switch Setting screen and it is here where you can customize those icons as well as whether you want to always display in the foreground, hide the button icons after a fixed period, or change wallpaper when mode changes. I actually like these icons. I customized them to function as playback controls and mute. And I have the " Always display in foreground " unchecked. It's pretty cool actually. And as I said, there are 3 mode settings and you can customize these icons to do something for each mode. Hope that helps.

 

you can also add volume up and down to the buttons as I found here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=448489