I've had bad luck with using USB drives for backup in general. Two seagates and two Toshiba drives died before I got a synology unit. It's been rock solid so far.

If there's one lesson I learned from Star Trek it's that you always, ALWAYS, include a manual override.

Microsoft has less leverage with the OEMs than ever. You can get crapware free systems from the Microsoft store. They all come configured by MS without the crapware.

I get 5TB of storage with my Office 365 accounts which is way more than I really need. There's just no point in paying for another service like Dropbox anymore.

Don't see why not. My current Win8.1 machine boots in under 4 seconds.

Sure, just sweep under the rug all the complaints made by so many of the people who actually tried to use the system.

Windows Mojave was also better received than Vista and it *was* Vista.
Once perception sets in it's hard for people to change even if they don't even try it.

That said, it was a fairly terrifying experience at the time. Head strapped down and being told repeatedly not to move. Then there was the smell of burning eyeball. That was the worst part.

But not needing to wear glasses under my motorcycle helmet has made up for all of that. From the people I've talked to they say they're use to glasses / contacts and they don't feel it's worth the risk / expense.

You're not. Lots of people hate it. There are also lots of us that like it though. Just the way it goes.

The title is very misleading.
They aren't going to make a single build that runs everywhere. They are (already have) going to consolidate the different groups making different versions of Windows (phone, pc, xbox, embedded etc) into one group. They are also going to make one store and one app platform. Things will still need to be compiled for different architecture.

a glass of scotch.

I already know C++ and like it quite a bit but if you want to use C# for games you might as well give Unity a try. I've only worked on small projects (and as a one man team that's all I really can do) but it's fun and powerful enough for everything I want it to do.

I first want to say that I agree with much of what you've said, especially about starting small.
But...
Notch has shown us (yet again) that #3 is really the only one that matters.
Early Minecraft was not well coded. It still doesn't have great graphics or sound (though I do like the music) and there really isn't much of a story.
You don't even have to play the story part of the game to have hours and hours of fun and Mojang is doing quite well for themselves.

It's free. It's fun and there is a large community of people doing tutorials and videos and answering questions.
Just dive in.

On one hand you want Google Play store and Google apps but on the other you don't want Nonstop monitoring.

hmm.