. . . Microsoft has done this to themselves. Having failed to come up with a compelling mobile space product, they decided to force the half baked mobile OS on desktops, where they had, for better or worse, at least established themselves. No one is buying windows 8 machines that owns any previous windows computer. . . and those who hadn't bought a computer yet are buying tablets and phones and other internet consumption products. Now Microsoft wants to kill of thier segment of the content creation space. It's baffling.

man (1) circular saw; man (1) screwdriver; man (1)socket set; man (3) 2x4; man (5) bolt and nut; man (5) carpenters screw;

I'm pretty sure using these tools and devices you can solve your problem. otherwise, try #ubuntu

or #microsoft

In essence, they are paying us. The services provided, free of fee, are not free to create or deploy. They cost money. And providing them free of fee is offering a good for a good. I for one am a significant google user. I depend on their email, their docs/drive service, and their android aosp project to manage my day. It comes with ads. Which I block, using tools I download from their services. I am continually astonished and appreciative of how easy it actually is to opt out of most of the adsense network. I downloaded an adblocking utility for my android phone from the 'play store,' and adblock from the 'chrome store.' I use incognito mode in both to dodge a couple of pay walls. Google is both the largest user of tracking based ads, and the least aggressive. We deal. I for one agree with the OP. The trouble is, the best services available are ad supported, because that's the business model that's working. Anyone bought webmail service lately? was it better than gmail? I don't like ad supported services. I'd rather pay. But I want to pay google, not some $0.50 operation that cant deliver what the google can. so frankly, i appreciate how easy google makes it to not pay my information as collateral for services. Don't want ads? Google it.