May I ask why you want to disable it completely? I don't use myself and strongly dislike it but it's really useful to some people and disabling is kinda frowned upon to say the least.
If you need to adjust your layouts depending on whether it's there you can use:
no subject
Date: 2012-02-29 08:53 pm (UTC)If you need to adjust your layouts depending on whether it's there you can use:
.has-navstrip
.no-navstrip
There are body classes.
Just mentioning it in case you didn't know.