Right hand panel opens as default behavior

Right hand panel opens as default behavior on Acrobat Reader. This is unhelpful and I have heard 1000s of people complain about this. We have laptop computers and, when we use them without docking stations, the right hand panel ‘eats’ a significant portion of the screen area. I work in an engineering environment on a secure/controlled network and cannot edit the registry keys or the application files to remove the right hand panel. Our PDF and Acrobat installation, files are locked and changing the open feature is not possible.
Additionally, the changes to the application files are automatically reverted to ‘default’ when an update is done.
The right hand panel might maybe be useful for a small portion of users but is definitely NOT useful for engineering or government users. The huge number of persons searching for ways to disable this ‘default’ behavior, indicates the lack of interest in the general community. 
I suggest that the right hand panel be made an option as some will, undoubtedly, find it useful.
I, also, see that the requests for this ‘feature’ to be remove; date back... at least a decade.

Thanks