Naw, you’re right. There are still ways to get a decent windows experience, but it will fall to the domain of power users.

I personally see MS not really caring about their windows users. With more than enough revenue from enterprise to keep them going for decades, they will lose grip on gamers and older casual users, who remember windows before the marketplace and preinstalled adware.

With all the flavors of Linux (and a proper walled garden like Apple), I’m thinking Windows will follow Skype in the next decade or so.