4-5) The default tick marks on minor units have their uses. If we have an axis label (and maybe light gridlines) every 2 units, tick marks for the odd (minor) units feels right to me.
7) Topless (and sideless) bars seem purely a matter or personal preference. Possible does not always equate to preferable, but ,*agreed*, most bar charts don’t need a legend kept outside the data rectangle.
10-11) Indeed, the main factor preventing the plot area from swallowing the whole graph space is the need for easily legible & understood titles & axis labeling…
12) [Now Jorge's going to have to jump in to keep us from fighting!] One of my pet peeves is charts made by people who can’t be bothered to label their axes clearly, or put units of measure on them. The axis labels are the ideal places for those little details, like perhaps an apparent Yugo sales boom chart actually showing total units shipped either way (not $ revenue) only in 1981 in Eastern Europe, which would not constitute a current world threat to Toyota net revenue after all.

More generally, this article prompts the question – If Microsoft have given us an example of what NOT to do with charts, what SHOULD we do with charts instead ?

Here’s the list of things that I would typically go through when making an Excel bar chart like this. Some of these may not be right for all applications, but I do find myself relying on them most of the time. And of course you can set these up as a customised chart in your library once you’ve decided your preferences.

In no particular order (and using Excel 2003) . . .
1) format plot area to white, light grey border
2) format gridlines to light grey
3) format both axes to light grey
4) remove tick marks from both axes
5) make sure scale is appropriate, and also major units (don’t use minor units)
6) set appropriate number format for Y axis (and X axis if required)
7) format each data series to NO border, and choose an appropriate fill colour format legend to no border, and if possible place within the chart
9) make the chart as big as possible, to take up all the available space. By this I don’t mean the chart HAS to take up the entire screen. If you want to have 4 or 10 or 50 charts on the page, that’s fine, but make sure each one takes up 100% of the space you have allocated to it.
10) make the plot area as big as possible
11) select an appropriate font size for all text elements
12) if possible, do without x and y axis titles – try and make the titles self evident from the chart title, the Y axis number format, and the X axis category names.

I’m sure many will disagree with some of this – over to you

Gerald – seldom do we see sensible guidelines for how to handle the legend. For low information density charts like these, yes, the traditional outside legend seems superfluous. However, for higher information density charts (old-style “professional charts”), William S. Cleveland had a rule “Do not clutter the interior of the scale-line rectangle.” In The Elements of Graphing Data, while fully opposing ChartJunk just as Tufte does, he offered some reasonable arguments for preserving that rectangle formed by four scale lines (not two) — to make it clear where the data points may be found, and make them less likely to be overlooked.

As for the legend, there are at least two improvements that you can make.
First, put the legend INSIDE the chart. This makes it simpler to cross reference between information and key, AND it maximises the space available for the chart.

Second, don’t have a legend at all ! Just label some of your data directly.

On a more positive note, at least they got a few things right. Well, actually only two – removing the grid lines and deleting the border from the legend. Although, I actually prefer the legend to be at the top/bottom versus the side so you can maximize the actual chart width.