What you said. I hate REAL. I don't like Quicktime, either. Too hard to control. My PC is mine. I'll decide when something loads into memory, either at startup or whenever. I am kinda' hooked on WMP internet radio, though . . . .
BTW, Piriform's Ccleaner is a great tool for removing things from MSCONFIG, not just disabling. Why can't MS allow you to remove unwanted items from the startup? And it loads it's uninstall list about 10 times faster than MS Control Panel. Good for clearing out unwanted cookies and removing leftover registry items when installing a new video driver. And it's free.
Dittos.
For stopping Real (and other persistent pests), I use Startup Inspector (free) and ZoneLabs Security Suite (not so free)... Real is gonna try to download and install itself automatically sometimes thru some backdoor. ZoneLabs might not be able to prevent that install, so if it does do an install then Startup Inspector will prevent it from running, while Zone is set up to stop any and all I/O from RealNetworks and it's many variant URL's.
I've worked out a series of tweaks to both of these programs and when used in tandem have been *real* free from it's nonsense for several years now .... it's still sitting there as an installation, but if I happen to land on some pathetic website which still features embedded Real video it ain't going nowhere .. and I feel sorry for any website still using it, they just lost my online 'eyeballs' forever