It's an insanely tiny very low power thing that was almost as cheap as I could get. I just needed a Windows PC around and it fit my needs. Totally fine for basic stuff.

But wow. I’ve seen articles about how it was getting worse, new things MS has done, pulled back on, and put in later.

I was used to all the stupid advertisement stickers that have been there forever. Bing desktop images I’ve seen before and is a nice default IMO.

But the big ads in the start menu? And the thing of the day on the search bar? Candy Crush and other crap? CONSTANT OneDrive and Office 365 nagging? Are you sure you didn’t mean Edge this time? Really?

I’d heard of it all but it’s so comically over the top in person. And takes a while to find out how to disable.

My last personal PC was XP Pro in the early 2000s. I’ve used a number of work PCs with newer versions but they were all locked down with group policy so none of that appeared.

Windows is a self parody at this point. I know it’s a very good OS technically. But wow they found out how to ruin it.

* Cortana. Nobody should have been forced to use a modern version of Clippy, but at the OS level, and one named after a video game (AI) character. It made the whole OS feel like a joke - to me, at least.

* Tricking/forcing people to sign in with Microsoft/Outlook credentials, so their Windows account would now be tied to MS online credentials.

* Tricking/forcing users to upgrade into Windows 10. This happened to countless people, including to someone in my family.

* Displaying literal ads in the Start Menu

It’s the ads for services or upgrades to service plans or new features of services that I don’t care about that I hate.

IAPs ruined the App Store, services are ruining the OSes.