Every modern commercial software, has a bunch of mainstay elements. Even for free software such as Adobe Reader, there are Just too many features being included in subsequent releases. Winamp and VLC, are both commonly used media playback software, and have advanced features that is not of use to everyone. Feature bloat is Just one kind of bloatware. Games, and professional multimedia processing software include code for handling copy protection, and ensuring that the software is licensed and authenticated. Adobe Photoshop and Premiere both struggle on even on the best rigs available in the market.

Then there is process bloat. For example, the latest version of Win amp runs both an agent as well as the player itself. These are two processes for essentially the same task. Printers, soundcards, and routers often come with CDs that install software on the computer, that are not really necessary. These software perform essentially the same task as the OS, but with little added functionality, and a better looking user interface. Another kind of bloat is almost opposite to that of feature bloat. There are multiple software installed in a system, for essentially the same, or similar tasks.

Quicktime and RealPlayer are players for their native formats, and both the media players suffer from feature bloat as well. Often users have to install multiple browsers on their operating systems, even if they need and use just one. This happens for two reasons - firstly; until Windows 7, it was not possible to uninstall Internet Explorer. Secondly, not all web sites could be viewed on all browsers. A user will typically have a download manager, a P2P client and a torrent client, when a single application can do all these jobs. More than one messenger client also does not really make sense, but many people have installed the default messenger clients of MSN, Yahoo' and Google.

Free and open source software are generally perceived as being less bloated than their commercial counte,parts. One of the most important reason for this is the lack of competition. These software are written for multiple platforms, and often follow the UNIX software design philosophy, which is to write a software for one particular purpose only, and make it streamlined for that purpose. Those who compile the programs they use have the option of leaving out features they deem unnecessary. In the commercial .software arena, the rules of the game are entirely different.

A DVD burner with the ability to transcode data is perceived as being better than a DVD burner that does not. This may seem like a minor addition on the surface, but adds significantly to the system's software footprint. There are a 'number of video and audio formats to choose from, and a host of codecs for each of those formats. Every added feature significantly bloats up the software.