> Gee, I never saw people complain this way with Solitaire, Mineswepper, GNOME Games Suit, or the dump of floppies they would get on their Atari/Amiga/PC bundles.

Strange. Especially as those didn't actively run analytics when you run them. Perhaps those two situations aren't completely comparable.

This is very little to do with privacy matters if you look at the comments here.

The difference is that in one case the developer is adding something purely because they think it might benefit the user, and in the other case the developer is being paid by a third party to do something to the user that they wouldn't otherwise have done.

How is that different from any OEM bundling then?

And also, how would a link to the store track and analyse you?

I guess it isn't really any different from OEM bundling, other than that you now have two links in the supply chain (both Microsoft and the OEM) being paid by third parties for adulterating the product.

(I didn't say anything about tracking, but there's plenty of that in Windows already. There are settings, enabled by default, to let Microsoft track every application you launch and every website you visit.)

Windows stuff is not stored in ROM.