Microsoft littered its frickin operating system with ads. Something you (officially at least) are expected to pay full price for. It boggles the mind that people continue to accept this treatment.

I'd be willing to bet most Windows users probably haven't even thought about Windows costing money - somewhere in the high 90 percent range. For the last 13 years upgrades have been free and new purchases have the price built in. The only exceptions are those that actually know about other operating systems and look for the option to buy without or people that do custom builds.

At least when one signs up for e.g. Hulu you're forced to realize different rates include different things. With Windows most don't even realize they had a choice.

It does lead to the question why people are fine buying a PC then having ads but again I'm not sure many really understand (or necessarily care) about the difference between ads in the start menu or ads in something like the browser, it's all just "the computer" and ads have just always been a part of a computer for most so what's to make them expect otherwise.