Setting up a dependable Windows machine. In the days of Windows 7, you installed a clean image from Microsoft, added the drivers you really needed and you were

Setting up a dependable Windows machine. In the days of Windows 7, you installed a clean image from Microsoft, added the drivers you really needed and you were good to go. If you didn't do anything weird to your system, it could run for years without a hitch. Nowadays, Windows reboots on you at the most inopportune moment. Updates often change the look and feel of the system. Drivers break in unexpected ways. Even if you use the clean image, Windows automatically installs manufacturer bloatware, see Waves Max Audio Pro for example. Even something as simple as sleep mode works much less reliably than it used to, a lot of laptops, especially Dell laptops, wake up randomly, and there's not much you can do about it. You need a Microsoft Account to even install the damn thing. If you can't use one because of age restrictions, lack of internet connectivity, living in a country on the embargo list or for whatever other reason, you're screwed. Your home folder will be named after your first name. If your first name contains diacritics, some old software is going to crash in weird ways and there's not much you can do about it. If there's a file that Windows Defender doesn't like, it's going to be nuked. Even backups don't help, if you plug in the drive. with your backups, Defender is going to delete that file from there too. Not to mention all the telemetry, advertising and other shady stuff Microsoft is doing these days. I've been an avid Windows user for years, but it has gotten so bad I just had to switch to something more sane. If I feel more in control of my computer on a Mac than I do on a PC, there's definitely something wrong.