I skipped Vista and Windows 8. Windows 7 and 10 have been solid for me. I'm rocking a 5 year old desktop and got a nice performance improvement going to Windows 10. My oldest daughter has been rocking the same i5 Dell laptop (Windows 7 then 10) since her senior year in high school. She's in grad school now. No problems and I'm the guy who gets the call when there is a problem. IMO install an SSD, keep your AV and patches up to date, and don't click on stupid shi* and you probably aren't going to have a problem.

If I lived in Russia or North Korea, yeah I wouldn't want to be tracked. Here in the US I think it's mostly a good thing. If you are a terrorist or criminal, I wan't law enforcement to be able to track you. I sure do like Waze, Gas Buddy, Life360, etc. They don't work too well though if they don't know where I am. Though I could do without "Welcome to Lowe's" popping up on my smart watch everytime I go there.

Don't forget. Always pay with cash, preferably loose pennies.....

Here's why I love Windows 10. In-laws have a Dell X2 3600 they've been using for the last 10 years. It's been acting up lately so figured I'd install an SSD and put Windows 10 on it since it is a free upgrade (was running Windows 7 Home and before that XP). Migrated over to the SSD and then upgraded to Windows 10 Home. Everything went smooth, but performance kinda sucks. This PC doesn't support AHCI and we're using the generic Windows video driver. Maybe time for a newer PC? I check my stash of old PCs and find a Dell Core2Duo. Pop the SSD in and it boots right up after hardware discovery. Performance is very decent for what they are using it for (Core2Duo running at ~3 GHz, 4 GB memory, 120 GB Samsung 840 EVO). Windows 10 Home will not activate though. Check the original license on the newer PC. It's for Windows 7 Pro. Change the license key to the default Windows 10 Pro license. Windows 10 updates to the Pro version. Change the license key and type in the Windows 7 Pro license and just like that I've got activated Windows 10 Pro.

Your phone is a computer. Your TV is a computer. You've got a tablet that's a computer. You've probably got a laptop and a desktop. My troubleshooting of problems with those devices is certainly not limited to the Windows universe and does include Ipads. Pre-Windows 7? Absolute nightmare. I just have not had that experience since Windows 7, especially with an SSD installed. To pull a drive out of a 10 year old machine with a pre-AHCI Nvidia chipset and put it into another machine with an Intel AHCI supported chipset and have it boot up after a quick hardware discovery and no registry edits is amazing. I think I paid $200 for that original Dell and nothing for the Core2Duo. I did pay ~$100 for the Samsung SSD a few years ago though.

Be careful with the newer Mac Minis. The ram is now soldered in and not upgradeable.