I don't know if this helps but what I've found is that anything that puts icon in the taskbar refers to it as a quick launch icon. I make it point to get rid of all unnecessary quick launch icons seeing as they're annoying and slow my computer down.

That's the beauty of my method. Since I only use QT when I absolutely have to(and it sounds like you do, too), it isn't that big a deal removing it occassionally.