>I think right near the top are those applications that, once you run them, insist being loaded into the System Tray on startup without asking or giving you any control over whether or not they do. AIM (AOL Instant Messaging, which my son uses) is like that.

Not so. You can decide whether AIM runs at startup and whether it attempts to sign on when it starts up. Check out the General page of the Edit Options dialog available under My AIM.

Tamar