There are a lot of reports of simple.life being a scam app. Charging people more than they agreed on and not honoring requests to cancel, being auto-subscribed to other ‘offers’, and the app not providing the info they claim it does. I filled out their questionnaire but did a bit of digging and stopped before giving them any payment. They still have my info though…

"Microsoft applied a data-driven approach to find out which features to add now, which features to add later, and which to completely avoid.

Unfortunately, for the enthusiasts who had a left-aligned or vertical taskbar in Windows 10, you would have to settle for the fact that Microsoft’s data shows such users are really small when compared to the number of users who are asking for other newer features in the taskbar."

100% of the users that are smart enough to care about moving the task bar are also smart enough to turn off all optional telemetry. This sadly a part of why tech companies are making products for the dumbest people and pushing away power users.

Do it from their website (settings then account)so that you can fill out the exit survey and tell them why.

Custom Android ROMs based on AOSP, which is the open source parts of Android. I used to use LineageOS back in the day.

Before buying a phone, make sure that it has an unlockable bootloader and a custom ROM of a recent Android version. Note that some phones have multiple versions for different regions and some might not be unlockable, while others are. For example many Samsung international phones are unlockable, but none of the USA models are.

Note that many commercial apps like Netflix, Pokémon Go, bank apps, etc. will refuse to run if your bootloader is unlocked. It also permanently trips Samsung’s Knox.

Once updates end in October, Windows 10 won’t be secure and probably shouldn’t be allowed to connect to the internet. It will still continue to function though. You can buy a year of extended support for Windows 10 for $30, but it’s unclear whether there will be support after that.

Probably best to start switching to something else, or plan to run that PC offline.