You are most welcome, and please let me know if you have any follow-up questions.
Linux is a good OS too. I always recommend that people seriously considering a switch set it up in a VM or a spare machine and try and use it for everything for a couple of weeks. Some people do that and are happy, others get frustrated, usually some app they need and can’t run there. To each his own.
But I wouldn’t look at Linux as a way to be free of privacy and security concerns. You are FAR more at risk from some 3rd-party application - regardless of OS - than anything from the OS.
Also, it is worth mentioning that At Microsoft every group has some team of people, they are typically part of the org that includes lawyers, that is in charge of privacy policy and enforcing that. Every employee has to go through this annual Standards of Business and Conduct training, which among other things has a large section devoted to privacy. Every employee has a hotline number and email they can contact with questions over what is allowed, or to report any concerns. No system is perfect, but hopefully from this you get the sense that customer privacy is important at Microsoft. People here realize that if the customers don’t trust us, they won’t buy our products. Then we’re out of a job, and no sane person wants that :)
[[Some people do that and are happy, others get frustrated, usually some app they need and can’t run there]]
I tried running several flavors of Linux and my gosh- I ran into one problem after another that took forever to find solutions to online (the tech on Linux is either way over my head, or very sparse for the specific problems I was having- could not get wine working right- missing files, this that and the other thing- reminded me of the early windows days- couldn’t get hardware to work right etc- it was a bloody nightmare- I thought that I’d had enough of that back in early windows- so will stick with windows 7 as everything I throw at it just works basically- and there’s tons of online resources if something doesn’t-
[[No system is perfect, but hopefully from this you get the sense that customer privacy is important at Microsoft.]]
Sorry- but gathering the info in the first place exposes the user’s info to threats- just look at all the companies who took privacy seriously who got compromised, SS, Target, Home Depot, etc etc etc-
It’s like the online ‘security suite’ company that advertised relentlessly about ‘securing your computer’- people went with htem in droves thinking they were making hteir computers safer- Bzzzzt- the company got hacked- and the bottom lien is they got hacked because they were a huge target Database of specific information that hackers were looking for-
Not saying that will happen- just that it’s adding another layer of vulnerability to an already vulnerable situation- them ore layers, the more can go wrong