@say-no-to-data-mining: I want to make a philosophical statement, have you looked at the Mere assertion fallacy. The Mere Assertion Fallacy states that you are stating or simply asserting something instead of arguing for it. If you want to make the assertion that MS is providing Data to government agencies then do something about it. Stop trying to justify your political view and start blocking what MS is doing. If you can't do that then start learning how to do it.
I'm going to dissect and answer each part of this comment. There are 3 Operating systems. Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Apple OSX Google is not an OS as android is Linux. Apple is an expensive premium manufacturer. Linux is not that complicated to understand and if you want to play video games you can always go get Steam. There are several distributions of Linux such as Ubuntu, Mint, CentOS, Kali, etc. I would advise using OpenSuse as it is very user friendly. It has been 6 years since you tried to use Linux. Do not come to use expecting sympathy as this is a tech forum. If you need to figure something out then learn how to. Forums are for places where people go to help each other out obviously the skill amount varies which is why you have to ask precise questions. Sometimes no one has the answer.
You want a fast system with generic windows drivers .... i'm the only one seeing the hook in here ? That is so cute, it definitely made the new day for me, thank you so much . Seems you're assuming all 3rd party as a bad thing in general - no wonder you had 'problems' with Windows 7. Installing lastest device drivers from my mainboard vendor is always the first thing after installing Windows, followed by graphics drivers and some tweaking.
I only get drivers directly from the vendor, too. In my case nVidia, and Intel. My motherboard is a legacy board, so nothing new. nVidia is really the only one that gets updated.
Still a nice attempt of him wanting to purge a keylogger in a Preview (with communicated telemetry in it) and installing far more suspicious software on his systems .
Shhhhh its better than doing nothing at all... O wait... Now I'll list out point for point the install order for a computer. 1. Install the Operating System. 2. Provide Windows a Product key 3. Install all the Updates for Windows (and watch it reboot over n over) 4. Grab the Drivers for the Computer. Motherboard drivers (all of them) Video Card Driver 5. Install basic software on the system such as firefox 6. Install advanced software such as GPU overclock as well as specialized software. 7. Tweak the operating system to make it more friendly (Personalize) 8. Apply Advanced Tweaks for the registry n such. The alternative is rolling up all these steps into the OEM Pack. However you must install the drivers regardless.
I still think "Why did you agree" with the Statement by M$, then work like to disable. it, would it not be easier to. install in VM and never enable Internet.. you can play all day an not worry about. seems so senseless to me...
In fact you're wrong because you didn't follow the advice of MS NOT to use any sensitive data (personal or for production) on it's unreleased software. Not MS has to be explicit, it's you who have to do. You should follow the advice of Snuffy: If you 'need' to be online, just keep your personal and production data and connection out of use and you're good to go.