That was a while ago, so admittedly it may have changed since then.

Regardless, when you have Windows set up, they then scatter those settings throughout various menus instead of having one centralized place where you can turn off all the advertising / some of the telemetry.

They also seem to be adding more of this as time goes on, which your one time disabling won't apply for. I turned off everything I could find, only to have more advertisements appear in my start menu months later due to what I believe was them adding in more advertisements in an update. I then had to go and toggle off.

I want to like Microsoft, I really do, but they don't make it easy. Advertisements in the operating system that I paid for is entirely galling to me.

I upgraded back when they were doing the free upgrade, laundering a slightly questionable license in the process. Are the pre-loaded bits and pieces fairly new? Was there no opt-out on first run?

I'm not doubting they are there - it is Microsoft after all - just confused why they would choose to spam paying customers when people with keys from, hypothetically, long expired MSDN packs are still chugging along with no interference...