Yeah, it's much easier to have to download a program for everything because there's no longer built in media, zip, etc support. I do believe users should be able to uninstall all of such things (media player & windows messenger especially) but removing them completely is stupid.

a look into the future ... I really want to see the persons face who always was against IE and is now happy that it has been removed next to all those useless features like WMP. and you just have done a fresh install to see that you simply forgot the driver and apps CD so you just want to go quickly into the web and download the latest driver for ya motherboard ... and here you are ... no IE ... no chance to download firefox without IE ... no chance to install everything no chance to do nothing ... you could not even use the PC as MP3 player .... very good future

not to forget millions of noobs asking How do I open a webpage ??? How do I play MP3's ??? And welcome spyware packed media players ... its time for return Go and fish some noobs

Ever heard of ftp?

now you keep any FTP server in mind ? and you may ask yourself on which engine MS FTP depends on