[rev_posix]

I never said best. I said easiest to get up and running.

Point.

However, you stated that "Windows does excel at special use cases".

Dict.org defines excel as:

"To surpass others in good qualities, laudable actions, or acquirements; to be distinguished by superiority; as, to excel in mathematics, or classics."

I would argue that it does none of these things, but is most commonly used for these situations as it's cheaper to deploy (see the comment about the VB programmers being cheap) than a proper embedded system.

I also still stand by my earlier points.  Google, facebook, telemetry on a web page, etc, are optional and there are ways to avoid the data mining.  There is no such option with W10, unless you pay money for a non-commonly available version.

Add in the misleading toggles in the control panel(s) that make it appear that it's not sending any data when it still does, and it's a situation where W10 and Microsoft are deserving of extra scrutiny and criticism IMO.

[Fury]

rev_posix, thank you.

[Klaustrophobia]

I know people will disagree with me here, but I don't think my not using Windows 10 is going to make a difference. (Same I reason I don't vote. The system is **** and I don't have enough cash to make a difference anywhere, but that's a discussion for another topic.) There's enough people who use Windows and don't even know about the Privacy issues that MS can go on even if all us tech informed stopped using Win10. Not only that, but I just need a computer that works and I cannot stand Apple's ecosystem ****. I can't stay on Win7 forever. Like XP, soon enough that OS will be insecure. Yeah, yeah, Linux this and that. Except when it boils down to it, I can install Windows on a machine and be reasonably confident it will work every time. And so will my productivity applications. With minimal tinkering required. That is worth it to me to just allowing yet another entity know about the time I searched the acceptability of wearing sandals and socks.

Oh don't worry, I have no delusions that I'm harming microsoft or convincing them not to do this ****.  They know people like me exist, but they also know the vast majority of their customers either don't know or don't care in the least, and can use that base to dominate the market and force it on the rest of us.  But refusing to cave and not being 'part of the problem' so to speak makes me feel a little bit better.

[Bryan See]

And, I have joined the Windows Insider Program to make Windows better, and ensure that computer users won't experience the problems associated with the changes in Windows 10, both hardware and software.