Could someone please tell me how to disable the alert tab that appears to the right of the settings tab while I am looking in my inbox.

It only appears on one of my machnes and not the other but for the life of me I cannot see any difference in the settings on each machine. The reason I wish to disable it is because it constantly flashes red and it is very distracting. MW 2010 collects all the mail and is working fine it is justs that sometimes my mail programs have to log in twice because of server errors, not my fault but theirs and is has been going on for weeks.
Thanks for any advice you can give.
Regards. Colin.