I'm inclined to agree with ya there since I have no strong feelings towards Windows 7 in particular and I've never tried earlier versions. Yeah, I can live with Windows 10 if i had no other choice or say in the matter, and it wasn't my old install (see the other parenthesis if you care to know)

The ads are on the Start menu search. They're not that bad as far as I remember, but i can see for others why'd they'd be annoying--in particular, those who paid for the software liscene already. it's the small little annoyances when it came to Microsoft's decisions (and the fact i wanna believe my Windows was just messed up from the word go...seriously, that thing was laggy as it was slow and just...strange is the best word I can describe using it, compared to other machines running Windows 10. So yeah, I already had one foot out the door as it was) and the fact I realized I had a choice that was NOT apple that moved me to Linux and it's been pretty good, considering 95% of my needs are met on Linux