The free update to Windows 10 does though. And despite your GP's rhetorical flourish, it's hardly a "downgrade".

Well, it's definitely not an upgrade. There's no way to maintain privacy with Win10 by simply turning off telemetry once and calling it a day.

Sleazy bastards.

It absolutely fucking is. Ads infesting everything on my desktop. Pervasive tracking. Breaking updates pushed against my will. I'm happy that it doesn't bother you, but for me no f*cking thanks.

I've disabled the lock screen ads and most of the tracking stuff. It's possible it's still tracking me in some way that I'm not aware of, but as far as ads.. I don't recall Windows showing me ads for anything. Where are you getting ads?

Relative to software, it's basically forever. At some point you're still riding a horse and demanding that a highway be horse-accessible. It's unreasonable.

I don't think being better than the rest entitles you to abuse whatever superlative you wish. If the tallest man in the world claimed to be "basically as tall as Everest" I'd scoff at him too.