> I miss the days when personal computers were simply tools, akin to pencils and handheld calculators.

> System 7 and Windows 95

If Windows 95 was the complexity level of a pencil to you, Win 10/11 is merely a color pencil. You should be fine getting rid of the nagging and adapting it to your needs, it hasn't become 10x or 100x more complex, merely incrementally more.

> Microsoft [...] not exploiting their platforms.

That's a phrase I didn't expect. What part of Microsoft do you feel was leaving money on the table, as they were sued by basically the whole globefor their business practices ?