I think that the colors you mentioned are "must haves", but personally I like to match my thread to my background color. I do like the Connecting Threads Essentials thread, and they are a little linty, but no more than C&C. On a whim, I bought a cone of CT's essentials, because it was on sale, and found out that the cones seem to be less linty than the spools, even though they're supposed to be the same thread, just more of it, so I'll use up my spools and will replace them with the cones.