ladyinred-jee, namaste. Actually, that is a very valid question and continues to be a matter of debate in the Computer Science community. However, with the abundance of RAM, permanent storage, and CPU power now, this debate has been nothing but a theoretical one. There is movement that wants only kernel and a very basic set of utilities in the OS. Most of the subscribers of this agenda are really IT guys with advanced computer knowledge, who know exactly how their OSes could be trimmed (if supported by the vendor), to make an optimal use of the available resources. However, the majority of the PC users today aren't as savvy. They all have different needs and expect their PCs meet those needs out of the box. What it means is that the commercial OS makers see it in their business interest to bundle the OS with "commonly used" software products, so that customization (it is very expensive) can be minimized. There is also the 'wow!' factor that helps the marketing... Regardless of their functional value, including some hip (tho resource hungry) technologies (such as rich animation, rendering) as a part of the OS helps boost the sales. There have been cases where OS makers have been asked by courts to remove one or more pieces of the bundled software from the OS. There are many countries that interpret such bundling as violation of their antitrust laws. So what is really in the interest of an ordinary user? Well, it's a difficult question because the needs are so different. But now the industry (even the open source community) has effectively adopted the idea that it is acceptable to include "commonly used" packages as a part of the OS. So I guess we'll have to learn to live with it. Don't know if it answers your question... But those are my couple cents.