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Preface
Everything listed here and said is from my personal experience, and may or may not reflect the experience of others. Your opinions on the matter are welcome, and you can voice them in the comment section at the bottom of the page. Again, this post is based on my experience alone.
IntroductionWindows 10...oh, were to begin. Before the launch of Windows 10, I was a Windows Insider tester. I tested every update they pushed out before release, so I was quite familiar with it before it's initial release. What I was seeing, and what I was able to do was awesome. The new flat icons were a welcome change, as it made it look more modern and clean. The better "Fastboot" integration made startup and shutdown times leagues faster than that of 8 and 8.1. And finally, upon it's release, I wanted to sing praises of Microsoft's next generation operating system. However, my time spent in the final build (release build) of the new OS, pushed me over the edge.
Are You Private and Secure?Even before Windows 10's release, privacy was (and still is) a HUGE concern for many people. Personally, I have nothing to hide, but the insistence of obtaining personal data from users is awful. Firstly, you can't disable every privacy issue brought on by Windows 10. And those you can, are circumvented by each update, effectively re-enabling each one you disable.
Second, is the whole Get Windows 10 (GWX) app. In the beginning, it was an innocent application that let you choose whether you wanted to take up Microsoft's offer of upgrading to the new system. You could just turn it down if you were more than happy using your current system. Then it began to become intrusive, popping up at inconvenient times, removing the option to decline the update, and even worse, downloading it onto a user's machine without the user's consent. This heavily mirrors malware, which many are saying about it.
Do you remember when Windows Update allowed you to disable them, and when Windows Defender allowed you to permanently disable your firewall and virus protection? I do, and Windows 10 removes both. Firstly, you can't disable updates. They are now required, and worst of all, if you forget to set a specific time to install said updates, you were rudely interrupted. Your computer would force restart, not giving you warning before-hand so you could save your work. What the fuck MS? That is not how you handle updates....
Second, Windows Defender. It used to be light weight, non-intrusive, and never consumed so many resources. Well, now it does. It will take up over half, possibly more disk usage and RAM, causing your system to be very sluggish for a decent amount of time. Further more, you can only "temporarily" disable it. Windows will re-enable it once you boot back into Windows, or if you're one of those who doesn't turn their PC off every night, after a few hours. I'm sorry, if I want to open myself up to attacks, that's my choice, not yours.
The Beginning
Upon the initial public release of Windows 10 went well for most users, others not so much. First, some people didn't want to wait for GWX to let them know they were ready to update, so they did so manually via Microsoft's new Windows 10 Media Creation Tool [www.microsoft.com], manually downloading an ISO and burning it to a DVD or writing to a USB pendrive. Upon a fresh install, Windows 10 would not activate, because it would not accept a valid Windows 7 or 8.1 CD key. So if you wanted a fresh install, you had to perform the upgrade FIRST, then do a clean install. This is very counter-productive. Microsoft fixed this with it's November update, but this brought in a whole packet of issues I'll go into later.
With all that out of the way, the system was alright. Games played just as they did in previous versions of Windows, I never really had any compatibility issues with either applications or drivers, things were looking bright. Since it was still a new system, I decided to look past all my gripes with the system, believing things would get better. However, Microsoft has become much more aggressive with their upgrade policy, implementing bully tactics, threatening to drop driver support, etc. This isn't how you get new users MS, don't become Apple or Charter Communications, it's not a good shift....
Windows 10 November UpdateThings were working just fine for Windows 10, until it's November update released. First off, they pulled it just as soon as they released it. A week or so later, putting it back up. All of my issues began here. First off, drivers. Half of my drivers were broken with this update. My PC began running poorly, graphics began tearing horribly with small red dots flickering all over my screen, and horrid screen tearing in video games. No matter what I did, I couldn't fix the issue, so I just dealt with it, thinking a new driver release would fix the issue.
Late December, things were getting worse, more drivers would break, things became unresponsive, and hard crashes. I never once had a BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) my entire time using Windows 10, so when I would hard crash, I never knew the cause. I ran test after test on all my hardware, and all would pass, giving the impression my hardware was just fine. I dealt with this for the next month, until I had decided I'd had enough. I eventually backed up what I needed, and wiped my PC, downgrading back to Windows 8.1. My only issue with 8.1 can be fixed with Classic Shell.
Closing
Windows 10 is a broken mess, plagued with horrid business practices, broken drivers, and more. The system is unstable, and is the first Windows OS I downgraded from, because of all these issues. I've been a Windows user since the 3.11 days, so I know bad Windows OSs. I've never hated an OS as much as Windows 10, and it's sad because I wanted to love this OS. I tried for so long to love it, putting up with as much as I did, but I simply just couldn't stand it anymore. And since my downgrade, all issues I had are gone. Everything works exactly as I expect. Thankfully, I'm also a Linux user, so I mainly use Windows for gaming, and the occasional C# application.
In closing, this is my experience with Windows 10 from before release up until my eventual downgrade. If you're one of the lucky few who have no issues with the new OS, then bravo! I really hope you're enjoying it, because what good I got from it was just awesome. I'll wait until 8.1 support has ended before I make the jump again. By then, either Windows 10 will be a super stable OS, or Linux will have made huge strides as far as gaming goes, and will likely become my only OS of choice. If you have any question or concerns, or want to voice your own opinion, place them in the comment section below, and thanks for listening. 
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