It's not next to the Start button. It's a very small area at the other end of the task bar, right in the bottom right corner. This is what is causing the problem. The right-click menu only has two items - "Show desktop" and "Peek at desktop". It is an integral feature of the Windows 7 task bar.

Ha! I've had my laptop getting on for 2 years now and it's the first time I've noticed this button. Makes me wonder how many other useful/irritating 'enhancements' I'm unaware of 8^)

My apologies, I did not read the post carefully enough. To be honest I had not really noticed it before and have created a quick launch took bar with it in, becuase it is an icon I use a lot. (Windows+M does the same thing).

THE GOOD NEWS. Andrew mentioned this remover above and it seems to work. I tried it and no howls from my anti virus stuff etc.

Ive always had my taskbar on the right from Win 2000 onwards, I just find it more intuitive.

Another thought. The show desktop icon is a toggle, so if you click on it by mistake, then a second click will bring you back to where you were.

That's very true. I guess that Tina just finds it disconcerting. I can't say that it has ever happened to me accidently.

Now enabling Peek in Win 8 is a useless function.

Not as useless as this one

Move the mouse pointer over the far right end of Taskbar and all opened windows will become transparent. This is what Microsoft refers to as "X-ray vision".

So that when the mouse pointer is down at the bottom of the screen and, while typing, the mouse gets knocked sideways the window I am typing in goes transparent.
At least this "feature" can be disabled

In reply to a post by philippercival:

THE GOOD NEWS. Andrew mentioned this remover above and it seems to work. I tried it and no howls from my anti virus stuff etc.

I originally ran that utility when I first set up my Windows 7 machine then forgot totally about it - and also having totally forgotten that desktop button that just sits there taking up space. Until I set up a new user account... Although the website indicates you just run it when you need to, that is not quite true. It actually installs a small program sdbr.exe, in the Windows directory that is run each and every time you boot the machine - but it needs administrator privileges that it suddenly lost with the new account. I had long deleted the original program and it took some time to track down the offender, then remove it from my startup and Windows folder.

Think whether you really want to use third party programs like this...

Indeed. No work is lost, but it's very disconcerting if you weren't expecting it, and suddenly whatever you were looking at disappears. It takes me a moment to realise what has happened, and sometimes I'm thinking the browser HAS crashed and lost everything, before I realise I must have hit the stupid button again.

I wouldn't mind as much if the button was good for anything useful, but I don't even have the consolation of feeling glad it's there, because it does come into its own occasionally. I don't think I've ever intentionally pressed it, just to have look at the desktop. As a rule, I'm not interested in the desktop, when a browser session or other application is open, but if I do want to quickly glance at it, I tend to do so just by minimising the active window. Same effect, but without needing a dedicated button for it.

T.