[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III Windows Mobile ROM De] -888-:
Ah no scotchua, I *don't* use completely stripped-down ROMs at all, ever :D

I doubt anyone does.

I load plenty of apps, probably more than most of the average people - I always have almost 500MB of programs on my SD (and none of those are any games!) and even though I install everything as much as I can to SD, I still get 50-70MB of stuff into Main Storage as well.

But all of them are *my* choices, almost all of them I have installed with UC.

Thats the beauty of UC which many Chefs seem to underappreciate.

I'm not against having any additional software, Im just saying that if Chefs would utilize UC more instead of cooking-in the apps that can be perfectly installed with UC, it would give more power to everyone - and make the ROMs more customizable than they are now.

As in the NATF's previous post example, he already denied users of his "Base" ROM their choice of Camera, Comm Manager and Album apps.

Would his "base" ROM be anything worse if those 3 apps wouldn't have been cooked-in but given to users as an option in extended cabs package? It wouldn't, and actually his ROM would have been even more versatile and customizable, because the same apps could be installed with UC by those who don't want anything else, while other versions of those could be installed by those who wanted something else.

I understand what youre saying - I agree it is "Chef's choice what ingredients they put in". But I'm not talking about show-off ROMs like ie sakajati's first kaiser ROM with Manilla2D, I'm talking about *base/small/lite* ROMs.

IMHo its some kind of misconception of what lite ROM is if anyone calls ROM "lite" yet half of *major* programs are already cooked-in.

I see here you partially see what Im talking about.

Unfortunately it doesnt work this way.

First, for any program to be uninstallable, it has to be installed from a cab. Therefore the cab have to be cooked-in. That takes space and would make any ROM more bloated than official ROM. take for example just few major apps like NETCF, WMLive, Office - just their cabs would still chomp out some 12-15MB of ROM, even if you would uninstall them, because you can't "uninstall" the cab itself, it will always be there in the ROM taking space. Thats worse than having them cooked-in.

But please follow me one step further.

Since you agree that it is better solution to have such uninstallable, the solution is exactly what Im talking about: anything that don't need to be cooked-in (in order to work properly) should go as a cab to storage card (instead of ROM as you suggested) and be installable/uninstallable from there.

Thats all it takes.

Less cooked-in = More.

With ie Camera app cooked-in you can't install any newer version on top of it.

With Album cooked-in you can't install newer version over it.

With Comm Manager cooked-in you can't install different version over it.

Almost every major program, when cooked-in, cannot be upgraded with newer version (or older if someone prefers it).

D3D drivers are almost released daily. What is the point to cook them in if by the end of the week there probably will be newer version? (and we all know that out of anything else we do want latest drivers always)

Those are just few examples.

Why should we force users to flash entire new ROM if all he wants is different Camera apps (for example)?

Solutions is moving all those programs to xtended cabs on SD and having them installed with UC , which would make them all not only perfectly uninstallable, without taking any space in the ROM when not installed or uninstalled, but they will be also easily upgradeable.

For half a year or more we have this perfect solution to all of it: UC

and almost nobody takes advantage of its great possibilities :(