This comparison is not fair. You're free to download just the LaTeX core and the most important packages. Add a decent Editor/IDE such as Kyle or TeXnicCenter,

This comparison is not fair. You're free to download just the LaTeX core and the most important packages. Add a decent Editor/IDE such as Kyle or TeXnicCenter, and you're still in the range of 50-100 MB. The 750 MB of the total LaTeX package should be compared to the size of Word along with all macros and plugins that are available for Word.