I always get annoyed at how many things want a system tray icon now. There's no reason for my mouse to need a piece of software that lives in the system tray. There's no reason for my IM client to live in the system tray. There's no reason for my video card driver to have an updater service that lives in the system tray. It's ridiculous. Of the 12 things in my system tray, I've only ever clicked on three of them. It's infuriating.
Get into Services and set unessentials to manual, bloatware to disabled(if cannot uninstall & keep functionality or driver). Some searching[0] around will show more than a few MS services can be disabled without anything of value lost.
My favorite piece of HP software was some printer "accessory" that would hang out on the desktop, overlaying the icons there, and on occasion overlaying every other piece of software as well, taking up pretty valuable screen real estate and mindscape, too.
