Sorry for being off-topic, but this has been bugging me, what are the consequences of removing the Network Neighbourhood/Places icon?
copied from Tweak UI help, though I don't think this is the full extent of the issue:
"Consequences of hiding Network Neighborhood
Since shell support for the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) notation is handled by the Network Neighborhood, hiding the Network Neighborhood icon will prevent Explorer from accessing resources via UNCs. In order to access network resources from Explorer, you need to map them to a drive letter. Note that the MS-DOS command prompt and other applications are not affected by this setting, because they do not use the Network Neighborhood to resolve UNCs.
In particular, hiding the Network Neighborhood prevents Direct Cable Connection from displaying the contents of the host computer. Aside from this, Direct Cable Connection functions normally."
IIRC, on Win9x, it would affect network/Dial-up authentication, but then a stiff breeze could blow over network configs on Win9x.
I can't find an MS support article on the issue.