You can just delete icons (they are just shortcuts), this will not affect the corresponding programs.
If you want to take Microsoft's icons off the desktop, download TweakUI (file TweakUiSetup.exe) form Microsoft.
This will do that the easier way. And it has a lot more useful feachures.
Right click the icon, and delete. I to only keep about 2 on my DT. They use resources to hold them on there, so it's a bad idea to have 50 of them sitting there, when you can always simply use the start/programs and start them from there.