A not-so-minor criticism of windows 7. Based om my own recent experiences
My first gripe: Hardware profiling..

Have you ever tried upgrading a CPU in a windows 7 system?

Or upgrading a motherboard?

How about moving a system image of a retail install to a new system, or a new HDD, or even restoring from an image backup?

You can do none of those things without Microsoft's approval. I say it's none of Microsoft's business what hardware I'm using as long as only one computer at a time per license is being used.

Memory, monitors, printers and other USB and PCI devices fall into the PNP category. Replace almost anything else because of a hardware failure and windows usually has to be reactivated if it even boots. In old versions of windows it was possible to drop a HDD with a working OS install into a new build with a completely different set of hardware and it would boot right up, recognize the changes and keep on rolling.

I've done all of the above in old versions of windows without any problems, without having to allow the system to connect to Microsoft or activate windows by phone. The mere act of enabling a serial port in bios is enough to cause windows 7 to freeze with a black screen and fail to boot.

2nd:
USB controllers are driven by bios, but you can't install windows to a USB HDD or a flash drive, because windows breaks the USB connection during boot. It's no wonder a lot of people are having trouble with slow USB connections. It's totally unnecessary for the USB connections to be broken during start up. Linux can be run from a flash drive. Why can't windows?

3rd:
The windows firewall, windows defender, unnecessary network protocols, and remote access can't be removed or fully disabled without causing network problems.

My biggest gripe:

Windows 7 is designed to notify Microsoft every single time someone logs into a windows 7 computer, anywhere in the world.

Here's what I believe really happens when you log in: While the network location awareness service is "identifying" the network you've been connecting to since the day you installed windows and telling you there's "no network access" or "limited or no connectivity", it's already contacted or attempted to establish connections with a DNS server, ICMP, home group, ICS protocol, the Microsoft software licensing service and several others, every time you login and start a network connection. This leads into the problem with installing an effective firewall on windows 7, and expands on my 3rd gripe.

No operating system that requires direct access to a network to remain functional is secure. If you want a windows 7 computer that has restricted access to the internet and therefore no access to Microsoft whenever the h*ll it feels like phoning home, you can't have local only connections either. In what would otherwise be an extremely effective security measure, if you try to isolate windows from the internet while allowing your browser internet access from an isolated sandbox environment, Windows 7 will try 4x at 3-5 second intervals every four minutes to connect to Microsoft, using a different port every time, relentlessly, for hours on end. If it can't connect directly, it will try port forwarding from your router. Failing that, it attempts to hijack your browser. Block that too, and after about a 6 hour period with hundreds of failed attempts to contact Microsoft, you'll lose all networking capability on the next reboot, until windows is allow to phone home.

The idea of a cloud based windows makes me cringe. If that happens, I'll switch to linux permanently and never look back.

Thoughts please........