My approach was spending even more money for the pro version so I could access the OS settings paywalled by group policy and set it to never automatically download updates.

It would tell me about updates, but wouldn't do shit until I clicked a button on the update page to actually install them (though without the option to pick and choose which ones).

It still nagged me about stupid shit I didn't want, like edge, bing, one drive, and their office subscription.

So when I built a newer computer, I gave them $0 and installed Fedora and laugh at my former reluctance because it's actually been easier and I haven't even had moments where I wished I had just stuck with windows.

Not saying that it's been perfect without any issues, I just recall that there were also issues on windows to deal with, a lot more dated responses showing up in searches that tell you do go to some setting window that no longer exists because the question was answered 6 months ago. Oh and I haven't had to fight my fucking OS deciding to change my settings back to the shitty defaults they set (plus Linux just has better defaults, so doesn't even need as much settings tweaking).

And as an added bonus, switching made me finally pull the plug on xbox game pass, which was a nice idea but I still mostly just spent my time playing games on steam and forgetting to check game pass when buying games on sale, so it was kinda a waste of money. But each time I considered getting rid of it before, I'd instead convince myself it was good to have and end up playing some games on there for a few days before forgetting about it again.

you could switch to linux

Done