MS is quite intrusive indeed. After the distressing regularity with which problems have repeatedly cropped up in their offerings I have learned to simply refuse all their attempts to "help" with registration and auto-updates. Did you know that in the UK recently the courts have ruled that even an Install Disk and Certification stickers on the machine were insufficient proof that the version of 'doze installed could be ruled as a legitimate version?
Another thing that annoys constantly is the fact that even though they are phasing out support for XP for EOL reasons they still demand that you authenticate an install? I learned this when a refurb I was using abruptly had its drive fail and I needed to reinstall the OS. Unfortunately, the expected way to restore the machine was with a separate partition on the drive which had all the critical information saved on it. Since the drive refused to even spin up any more that was no longer an option, so I turned to the two CDs provided for assistance. That would be the XPhome SP2 and the HP Restore disks. The system had been upgraded to XPpro SP3 just prior to purchase. Therefore I would not be at the same OS level if I went that route.
Attempting to use the Restore disk (on a newly-installed hard drive) resulted in it demanding the XPpro Install disk, which I of course had just found out I did not have, so that was a no-go. I then through gritted teeth attempted the XPpremium install. XP installed but did not recognize the PCI-bus network card and promptly put up a warning on each bootup that I had x-number of days to register the OS by phone since it could not connect to the network (ha! I did not even have an internet provider at that point!) or it would be seen as invalid. Thirty days later, the machine would only boot up to a warning that the OS was invalid and would simply sit there.
Never trust MS again.
I have recently redone a couple of machines back to 2k and 98SE, respectively. At least for those few programs I use which still do not work completely reliably on Wine. Incredibly fast now, and I found a quick and dirty way to bypass some of the driver requirements at least for the machines that I dual-boot with. I look at the Xwindows config files and write down what video libraries the machine uses, then look for a rough equivalent in the older 'doze drivers I have files for. Think of it as using the VESA drivers vs the Trident drivers. You won't get the full range of capabilities perhaps, but you will definitely get past the 640x480 / 16 colors level. My eyesight is not so good these days anyways, which probably explains why I sometimes wonder what I ever saw in some previous girlfriends sometimes, but anyways I really do not need 1680x1400 / 64million colors to work on text files, schematics, or search the web. I would just get a headache if I tried.
Dedicated machines work much better, I have found, especially when you use Linux to run on older machines. I have one machine set up for simple web browsing, email reading, and video downloading. Another is set up for use entirely for internet television and video viewing. A third is one of the more recent and set up for video processing and editing, and a fourth is a file compressor and BluRay burner. The latest one after those is an older one running 98SE for those 'doze programs which I still cannot get reliably running in linux.
For Linux, I use uberstudent 2.0 lxde with Dolphin and Opera for the web-accessing machines, since it has some extremely light system and memory requirements and ease of setup, and for the main machines and maximum difference in machines it runs on I run Mepis for its stability and decent Wine version.
I dual-boot on most machines for various reasons, not the least of which being that sometimes I have to use 'doze to properly fix an errant ntfs file since MS STILL has not published an official standard. The other is that some of the high-end programs I use run only with XP and above as its most common platform. Oh, they put out UNIX versions, true, but Linux Is Not UniX, of course, so I stick with what works. I still have to laugh however when I point out to the macophiles that NO high-level program manufacturors publish versions that support macs. Always worth a smile when I watch their reactions to that.
Well, you know you way around, while i am not that concerned with MS seeing things my PC does, as maybe it will help them to turn to Christ!
I am much a “power user” on Windows, and always found Linux to be come short in certain equivalents i really like, or ease of getting things to work, but it is useful. Plus i would have to purchase some media codecs to be legal as i live in the US.
Yet W/8 actually requires you to purchase ($10) Media Center for that! I got it for free as part of the early bird promo.
What mainly makes Linux somewhat viable for me is that you can use Firefox and OpenOffice (or LibreOffice). FF is working on a FF OS i heard. More competition is coming, but the Desktops are being marginalized somewhat.
I think one thing that has lots of potential is speech to text, which is still in its infancy i think, despite the price Dragon charges (i have 11.5).