When it comes to the quality and volume of bundled applications in Windows 7, Microsoft's latest operating system is in an interesting position. On the one hand, several previously bundled applications are no longer provided with Windows 7, though many are available for free as separate downloads. (Others, however, are simply gone for good, as we'll discuss below.) On the flipside, the exodus of often superfluous utilities from Windows 7 can be seen as a good thing: The OS is smaller and more lightweight thanks to the absence of what was, in Windows Vista especially, an eclectic, confusing, and overly-voluminous collection of applications and other utilities. How you view the situation in Windows 7, then, will depend largely on your perspective.

As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has mostly done the right thing. Many of the bundled applications in Windows Vista (Meeting Space? What?) were just weird and went largely unused. And for the truly high-value applications that were spun out of Windows and provided instead with the Windows Live Essentials suite, there's an argument to be made that the unbundling will lead to more frequent updates. We'll see if that happens.