I want to believe Microsoft has deeply changed internally. I've largely moved to Windows as a primary OS after nearly a decade of Linux only. I use Visual Studio Code for a lot of my programming. It's an OS I initially grew up with and learned C on, for better or worse. Azure even has some cool stuff going on.

And really, it definitely has changed in some fashions. Time will tell if their rancid business practices have changed, but so far it certainly feels like a different Microsoft.

But would I put them above Google or Samsung? Not really. Their consumer OS feels like it comes with malware built-in. You finish the install and Candy Crush Soda Saga is already installing. Then after you remove that crap, you notice that your start menu has advertisements for other apps in it. After turning that off you install another browser and discover that you have to get past a nag to switch your default from Edge, and if you're lucky sometimes it will even switch back when you're not looking. And don't run Wireshark lest you want to find out your computer is secretly a hub for Microsoft telemetry, sending signatures of apps you run for security purposes, hitting a server for keystrokes in your start menu search. Am I being watched right now?

Not that Google isn't also intrusive, but at least Google often tells you and offers you the chance to say no in exchange for some loss of functionality. With Windows, you get all of this crap even if you uncheck the boxes during setup. The only way around it is Server versions.

So I'd trust any ChromeOS box (including say, Samsung's) to work toward more of my interests than any inexpensive Windows box that might come with SSL root certificates and malware I never asked for. Sure, Microsoft doesn't pre-install superfish, but it amazes me how little they seem to care when others do it.