While Windows 10 has so far been a pretty reasonable upgrade from Windows 7 for me, its default form leaves a lot to be desired. Here are some wonderful things you should consider doing as soon as you install the OS. [b]Privacy[/b] While largely arising from baked-in cloud services like OneDrive and Cortana, Windows 10 nevertheless has many seemingly intrusive privacy settings turned on by default, evidenced by this excerpt from Windows 10's privacy policy: [quote]We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to protect our customers or enforce the terms governing the use of the services.[/quote] To disable many of the options related to this, go to the Start menu, click 'Settings' and then 'Privacy.' Most of the damning stuff is in the 'General' section, but the other sections have some questionable settings too; make a point to go through these and disable what sounds sketchy if you aren't using any of the features that require online connectivity. [b]Updates[/b] Windows 10 doesn't ask you to install updates by default; it'll download and install them automatically entirely without you knowing. While convenient for many, this can be annoying if you're working on an important project and want to maintain a specific workflow, or if you just want to know what the hell kind of changes your computer is making. Again in 'Settings,' go to 'Update and Security,' click 'Windows Update' and then click 'Advanced options.' Here you'll be able to force Windows to notify you when your computer needs to be restarted to install updates, as it was in Windows 7. While you're here, click 'Choose how updates are delivered' and turn off the switch above the two radio buttons; this turns off the 'feature' wherein Windows will indiscriminately sap your bandwidth to serve updates to other users over the internet. I find it baffling Microsoft has this enabled by default, especially in areas like Australia where bandwidth caps very much remain prevalent. [b]Personalization[/b] While obviously more superfluous than my other suggestions, the inclusion of theme customization in both the traditional Control Panel [i]and[/i] in the simplified 'Settings' menu is emblematic of Windows 10's unnecessary insistence on redundancy. The most damning example of this is the 'Personalization' option from within the Control Panel that allows you to choose a theme al a Windows 7, but disables the ability to edit each theme from that screen, which instead must be done from the identically named 'Personalization' within the settings menu. Further exacerbating the confusion is that searching 'Personalization' in the taskbar will give you the utterly useless Control Panel screen and not the one that actually allows you to change anything. Knowing this, the best way to get to actually functioning customization options is simply by right clicking a blank space on your desktop and jumping straight to the 'Settings' version of the appropriate menu. From here, a bunch of neat stuff can be changed, the most pertinent personally being "Show color on Start, taskbar and action center" in the 'Colors' screen, which simply makes most window elements inherit your chosen accent colour. Finally, something I've noticed when upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is that Windows 10 will include bring over your custom theme colour in the form of the new 'accent' colours, which cannot be manipulated with a colour mixer as they could previously. If you're a vapid piece of trash like myself, ensure you've set your Aero windows colours to the specific value you'd like before upgrading.