I have said this before and I'll say it again. I am happy to pay 3x prices for a "Windows Optimal" version. 0 telemetry, 0 unwanted apps, 0 bloatware, 0 shady tactics for privacy bypass or making things intentionally hard to tweak, 2x the performance of Windows 7 as promise. If the hardware has gotten better since the era of windows 7 , why do I feel the software is going backwards. If I had a million dollars, I would advertise my request for such a windows version everywhere on the planet from Madison square to NYtimes and even write letters to Satya Nadella
Each commercial OS during OOBE phase should come with two choices paths: express settings for majority and experienced for advanced users, professionals where you can tweak everything before system is ready to use, incl. telemetry and any sort of privacy settings, additional software and "recommendations" in whatever form.
Both paths should be industry standardized with UI as much as possible so no cat-and-mouse play with hidden settings would happen, and both should be configurable at any part so even inexperienced user could benefit from disabling "recommendations" or bundled software. Such OOBE configuration should be also persistent - once the choice is done it stays and doesn't require "additional steps" hijacks every other large update. And at any points given user can re-run the OOBE if for whatever reasons changed mind about e.g. sharing data.
This might be relatively simple to implement as a standard but would require actual commitment from consumer protection organizations, regulators that would push on companies. But somehow seems no organization care about these pushes - Microsoft goes each year further in limiting what uses can do on Windows. Perhaps as I said here already, there's some agenda of becoming the identity provider and going ahead with govt's ideas for online identification. Or perhaps it's just a plain greed for data.
