Thank you, bphlpt, for your detailed answers.
Yes, I started with punched tape, drum memory (IBM 650) instead of RAM, later punched card (millions of them -- more than 50 sorters and collators), IBM 1401 and NCR 315 with random access cartridge memory, which my father ordered; it was the first in Europe and broke the IBM monopoly. It was a scandal at the time.
I tested the removal of components with nLite on the XP+SP1 just to see what it would allow me to take out. I could remove IE, keyboards and most languages, ATM, etc. It reduced it from 531 to 350 MB by 181 MB. nLite could not remove the other components in my list.
Now I can estimate how much can be removed: 181 MB plus an unknown quantity of code for the listed packages: 60 MB perhaps. Total 240 MB on the XP+SP1 module.
The XP+SP1+SP3 module is 629 MB which is 118% of XP+SP1; Assuming that all components are affected by upgrades evenly, I might save 240 MB *118% = 283 MB.
I don't know how much code the add-on and security updates, etc. add. I guess, another 400 MB. Therefore XP+SP1+SP3+etc = 1029 MB. Adding the drivers, at least, the common ones, as you suggest, might be another 300 MB (I'm just throwing numbers around, LOL). The final product will be 1400 MB, and with the above components removed, 1100 MB. In any case, it will not fit on one CD without supercompression which will take hours to decompress, for example on a Toshiba netbook NB505 (W7 takes a long time to install).
The upshot of this "mental experiment" (Gedankenexperiment, as we learned in school to avoid costly mistakes) is that there will be no obvious space benefit. A DVD has to be burnt anyways.
In order to make progress, I will not try to take out these components unless I find a tool which does it for me on the base line module (XP+SP1+SP3 clean). Furthermore, I can relate to your reminder that one never knows when one needs it, because on my current XP without many languages I often see the "letter boxes" instead of letters (I believe they are the unicode numbers of some foreign letter). The other drawback is, as you advised me, that I would have to create a new build because it can't be installed later.
Actually, this Windows is a bad design from the start and this has had serious consequences for society. The components are not orthogonal. And while I'm critical, the other fundamental mistake is not to separate constant from variable space, where code is stored in constant space (ROM or CD, possibly rewritable) which helps security and facilitates live updating of modules. But we live with what they gave us. This gave a purpose to millions of programmers, like you and all the others in this group and in all the other groups, to make something better which is bad from the beginning.
Just imagine, if you all could have worked on something new instead, and as a group you would have come up with a great invention! Those millions of hours which were spent to improve the installation process; this saves one hundreds of hours yearly.
Enough of that diatribe! About the drivers in question 4, I appreciate greatly your suggestion to add them after the first boot. I cannot imagine how big this really is, and already the count is up to 1400 MB.
The reason why I do this is that I want to have a build which contains all (or say 95% of) the security updates and which installs rapidly on an older machine with 1 MB RAM, as well as on netbooks. I installed W7 on the Toshiba NB505 and it took a long time (its the decompression, the same is true for Office 10); on the Compaq the install was reasonably fast; however, W7 takes up to 50% more time to get the same thing done and it takes up more RAM and disk. Since a DVD holds about 4500 MB, maybe I can figure out how to store some installation files uncompressed or simply zipped which decompresses rapidly. That would reduce installation time noticeably.
Thank you for your suggestion about the two addon packs. I'm quite sure that both are excellent and express distinct philosophies of their authors.
Besides the above mentioned removal test I have created a XP+SP1+SP3 base the MS way using the ..SP3..exe with the /integrate switch. It's quick. Here I noticed the following:
The XP+SP1 contains a folder DOTNETFX; also the SP2 has such a folder with different files. SP3 was slipstreamed twice: first with DOTNETFX included, and second without. All output files have the same, respective MD5 sums. I interprete this to mean that the DOTNETFX was something temporary for SP1 and SP2, and in SP3 it is handled withing the i386 folder. Do you agree?
Well, thank you for having answered quickly and with useful suggestions which should not be too difficult to do. To start learning the RVM integrator, I start building a base. It should have the same MD5 sums.
I hope to be able to write soon. I'll be travelling next week.
Greetings from the far end of the world.
Working with computers since 1960 and still haven't caught up. Sigh!
idea -- maybe I'm crazy 
-- to remove these: WMP and DRM, Windows or MSN Messenger, MSN Explorer, Games, and maybe also IE, replacing it with FF which can be installed last from a file instead of integrating it. 
I hope you used face masks.
