Or being forced to use Teams and Azure, due to my company CEO getting the licenses for free out of his Excel spend? :-))
A broad index fund sans Microsoft will do just fine. That's the whole point of a broad index fund.
You'll just waste your time :)
Look, it's Microsoft's right to put any/all effort to making more money with their various practices.
It is our right to buy a Win10 Pro license for X amount of USD, then bolt down the ** out of it with the myriad of privacy tools to protect ourselves and have a "better Win7 Pro OS".
MS has always and will always try to play the game of getting more control, making more money, collecting more telemetry, do clean and dirty things until get caught. Welcome to the human condition. MS employees are humans. MS shareholders are also humans.
As for Windows Update, I don't think I've updated the core version at all since I installed it, and I am using WuMgr and WAU Manager (both portables) for very selective security updates.
It's a game. If you are a former sys-admin or a technical person, then you avoid their traps. If you are not, then the machine will chew your data, just like Google Analytics, AdMod, and so many others do.
Side-note: never update apps when they work 'alright', chances are you will regret it.
The pain is real :(
"You use Windows because it is the only OS you know. I use Windows because it is the only OS you know."
Some people downvote (it's not about the points) but I merely state the reality and not my opinions.
I've made my living as a sys-admin early in my career using MS products, so thank you MS for putting food on my table. But this doesn't negate the dirty games/dark patterns/etc.