Are my programs too large?

Hi. I’m hoping someone can help me to figure this out, as I’m not very computer-savvy. I’m running Windows Vista Home Premium on an Acer Aspire 9410z notebook. When recently installing a program, I noticed that its size was much larger than it was stated to be on the product’s website. I checked some other programs and found the same thing. For example:

McAffee Site Advisor: size quoted on download page – 1.68 MB
size listed in my installed “Programs and Features” – 6.52 MB

Auslogics Disk Defrag: size quoted at download – 1.34 MB
size listed in my programs – 4.07 MB

Adobe Acrobat Reader 8: size quoted at download – 22.4 MB
size listed in my programs – 126 MB (!)

I haven’t gone through every program I have installed, but I’ve checked about a dozen, and they’re all taking up several times more space than they should. Am I missing something obvious here, or do I have a real problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Mark is 100% correct. Setup files are compressed to make downloads faster, and some programs (like Adobe Reader) has updates that are installed after the initial setup which also increases the size of the program. A good example is Windows XP. The install CD has about 560mb +/- worth of data. After installation and updates, it's at right about 2gb...

 

Thank you both for responding. I knew that setup applications were a lot smaller than the actual programs, but since the smaller numbers were the only ones I could find pre-download, I just assumed those were the total program sizes. Gee, seems like they'd put the actual program size SOMEWHERE in the information before you download. Anyway, I couldn't find it... Thanks again!

 

Thank you, Moriarty. I will remember that. See you at the Falls for our last battle.