All in all, not nearly as bad as I was expecting, actually. Turning off all the crap in my start menu and taskbar was surprisingly easy. I did have to uninstall copilot twice for every user (ms365 copilot and copilot), as well as onedrive and "notepad" (which still fills me with rage - seriously WHY?!)

I'm sure I'll find more privacy violations to come, but so far, apart from the lack of that one extremely basic, important, and previously universal customisation option? I don't hate it!

In case you're unaware, notepad, the stripped-back editor for plain text has been "upgraded" to notepad, which comes with AI and fucks up your quote marks with smart quotes and a bunch of other shit that literally nobody who uses notepad wants or asked for.

The hilariously fucked up bit is that notepad is still there on your machine but if you want to use notepad you have to uninstall notepad first.