How to show Icon without notifications?

So the notification area in Windows 7 is customizable in that you can select to show all icons and notifications or selectably "Icon and notifications", "Notifications only", "No icon or notifications" for the programs. There is one option missing, showing only icon but not notifications.

How could I work around that? There are some programs I want to show on the notification area for their icon but I do not want to receive the notification bubbles of them and there are no options in the programs themselves to turn them off.

Of course to my logic if there is option to show notifications but no icon, there should also be option to show icon but no notifications. Well, apparently the new name "notification area" is made to resemble this restriction, it's made for the notifications and the icons showing there are extra. But what if the user wants it to behave otherwise?

Thanks for the replies and warm welcome.

Unfortunately those were of no help to me. I already know how to turn off the messages completely but the problem is that then it affects all programs, suppressing also notifications I really want to see. What I am looking for is an option to disable notifications for a single program but still enable showing of the icon all the time in the previously called system tray area. And I would like to be able to do it for any program of my choice, so it should be given as a choice by Windows itself.

Well, unless anyone finds out a way, all I can do for now is live with it and hope that Microsoft will be adding that as an option in an update or to the retail version of Windows 7 when it is released.

Yes, I have the same problem. Some programs are very annoying and always have a pop-up message, yet you need the icon shown without disabling ALL notifications. Hopefully there's a workaround...