After installing WebRep for Avast v6, a new toolbar shows up in IE8. I don't see why I need that rather undetailed toolbar. All it shows is some overall rating for my search results. What would I need that for? If I want to know the rating for a site then I look at the rating bar placed alongside each search result?
In the past, I've tried WOT and SiteAdvisor but gave up on both of them. They slowed IE not so much in how fast the search results were performed but how long before the ratings showed up. WebRep seems faster than these at showing its rating alongside the search results. However, I've found these user-voted ratings rather unreliable. Was was safe before might not be safe now. Was was unsafe before might be safe now (the site took care of the problem or changed their behavior). When reading the ratings, I see a lot of boobs participating in the voting. So I gave up on these site ratings where the user community was involved in deciding what was good or bad. I believe SiteAdvisor has their own ratings which can be modified by the user ratings but the user ratings don't have primary impact on the ratings, but SiteAdvisor seems pretty slow on rating sites (most end up as unknown for rating). So I might just uninstall WebRep since I haven't found similar site rating services to provide good and up-to-date protective value.
Until I decide whether or not to keep WebRep, I do find the inclusion of a rather nondescript and limited function toolbar to be just a waste of screen realestate in the web browser's window. However, if I try to remove the toolbar (by disabling it) then IE8 asks if I want to disable the add-on. I just want the toolbar to go away, not the WebRep ratings shown alongside the search results.
If the only way to get rid of the toolbar is to also disable the add-on then the add-on gets removed and it's all gone.