It's called business. Without selling space on the laptops the price of the laptop would go up. If you're somewhat intelligent you don't use what comes with it. You proceed to take your happy ass in to the add/remove programs page and dump them. You don't even give them a second look. Un huh, that's gone. BAM, that's gone too. Bada bing bada boom you're done.
But if you're really smart when you ordered the laptop you ordered a windows OS disc. You get it home and you wipe the drive and do a scratch install. Download the drivers you need along with your favorite software and you're all set to rock and roll.
It's not complicated really.
And paws, you're wrong about not having a choice whether or not to run their programs. You always have a choice.