Updates for non-installed and unused products

Hi,

I've always wondered why M$ offers updates for products that are not installed.

For example, I run office 2010 professional (Technet edition). I do not have sharepoint, infopath or onenote installed. Yet, I am continually offered updates for these products. Sometimes I deselect them, sometimes I just install them, depending on my mood of the day.

Perhaps these updates are offered because they contain framework components that the other applications use? Any other ideas?

Also, I do not use internet explorer, but uninstalling it causes Ordinal 459 errors with installation of other (even non-m$), applications. Again, should I keep installing the updates that are offered?

Thoughts anyone?

Tanya

Internet Explorer is a part of the OS (despite what MS told the EU), and cannot be uninstalled (except possibly from the N versions after installations as an add-on) without causing problems. You can disable it in Program Options, which has pretty much the same effect, but allows access to the dlls involved.

Likewise, I suspect that in Office, there are dll's which technically belong to one app, but are used by others as well - these need to be updated as much as the core ones for your installed apps. Particularly with Security updates, I would install every offered update, whether it appears relevant or not.