I get the point readily enough. Auto web search got disabled on upgrade. Dash sending searches in under-handed spyware fashion is indeed despicable, whether it can be disabled or no, without asking or telling.

      Except that, for the nonce, I flat out don't care. The only things I've searched via Dash have been some of the configuration utilities that either came with the install or ones I've added that I either didn't make a short-cut for, didn't show up in the menu (classicmenu-indicator was the first extra thing that I installed), or I can't easily find on my own. If Canonical wants to sell that minimal un-useful data to someone doesn't make me no never mind.
      The rest of Unity? I don't care. Launch bar/Unity bar, whatever it's called, sits along the left edge of a wide-screen monitor with smaller-than-default icons and is a convenient place to park a few often-used apps. Desktop shortcuts and classicmenu-indicator serve the rest of those needs, and the OS itself basically just works for the little that I use this system for - surfing, email, a bit of writing, a few games, and some media consumption.
      I'm just too old and too bothered by other crap to give a rat's patoot about something that doesn't affect me. But damn straight I'm watching them to see what they might pull next. I'm lazy enough not to want to switch distros but will if I think I need to.

      The only thing that really bothers me, daily, is the lack of built-in ability to alter the size of the mouse cursor system-wide, something easily done on Windows. None of the work-arounds have.... worked around that. This simplification of interface/configurability for we poor noob users has gone way too far. May the fleas of a thousand camels invest the nether regions of any devs involved in that, unto the tenth generation.

Good idea; several others in later comments as well.
      I got used to bookmarks, have several thousand (yeah, ok, I read a lot, am not all that mobile, can't afford to get out much, and memory sucks) and have maybe 75 sites in Opera's speeddial. I used to organize them episodically as need arose or enthusiasm allowed.
      Before I ditched Windows I used for years an excellent bookmark manager, Linkstash. It had tags, color coding, comments, and made it easy to sync favorites amongst several browsers, and export in various formats - very handy app. Also, it could check for deadlinks.
      If I'd remember to use my Win virtual machine for browsing, I'd use it again. But mostly I work from the one desktop, don't even use different workspaces; and using a separate OS instance for browsing would require getting meself organized....

Well, ok. I downed an iso for Ubuntu 7.10 (32-bit), burned it, and installed as a vm under VirtualBox, host being Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit. Fine. Upgraded to 8.04, worked fine. Then it hit me, half the repos I'd normally use - restricted extras, backports, third-party, partners - weren't there for versions that far back.
      Whoops. Next upgrade offered by GUI updater was 10.04. Don't know what happened, was off re-packing my wounds (aftermath of blood clot, _not_ fun, it's been three months now....), got back and machine wouldn't wake up. Killed it by closing the window, re-started to a kernel panic: couldn't find fs.
      So, ok, that didn't work.
      But I have taken several of my Linux machines through the process - as the updates and upgrades were offered - without much hassle. That's a qualified "much", of course. Sure as tootin' all OS's suck, just differently. I've had the same ease, mostly, with my Windows systems, including the gotchas.
      Often as not, I've found that when doing an upgrade, it's better to save the docs, software keys, what have you, and do a clean install, then re-install apps. And I do hate the extra time this takes.
      I've had about as many driver problems in Windows as in Linux - both have gotten better since, say, '01. (I had _one_ driver problem in Linux since '09, but I haven't had that many systems to play with, not like you, having a store and all, and yeah, I helped out at a store here in town for three years, mostly OS, software, file recovery (testdisk is your friend), dis-infection, re-installs, etc. I know some of the hassles.)
      Sum up, my own limited experience says I prefer the ease of use and fewer hassles of doing updates via GUI on Ubuntu to doing updates on Windows (including apps and drivers.)

      I figure it's use what works for you - and in your case, for your customers. For me it'd be a toss-up which I'd rather do: handhold people through Linux probs (wouldn't be me, I'm too stupid) or keep fixing those brought by Windows users who refuse to do updates and just "have to click" on every damn thing they see on screen and browser.

Somewhere mid-'01 I started using Deepnet Explorer as my main broswer; it used IE's rendering engine and a few of its libraries. It had tabs, multi-thread downloads, and some other neat stuff I've forgotten; it was fast and generally rendered most pages well.

I also used IE (for Windows update, at least), Opera, and Netscape.

Oh, OK. After I start Steam, I usually left-click on taskbar icon and select game from my default Library tab. While I sometimes leave it running for days, I notice there's a tendency for the connection to drop, so I have to re-start it anyway. Costs me a couple of extra clicks, but the arthritis is not bad yet. [grin]