Ekshully it's more like trying to get technical info from a minwage WalMart flunky. 'Nother words, they're only paid to sell you shit.
Given the technical expertise at our local (and now defunct) Best Buy, I'd place my bets on the WalMart flunky having a better chance of fixing just about anything.
It's all about control. Once upon a time, a Microsoft OS was a lovely, customizable joy. Now it's a mean dictator.
A "joy" might be pushing it.
You can sort of see why they do this, though. The vast majority of users wouldn't run updates in a timely fashion, some ambitiously destructive virus/exploit would make the rounds, then MS would get massive bad PR as being unsafe/unstable. They clearly decided that forcing updates would be less problematic to them than the negative publicity. In their shoes, I'd probably make the same call.
And for your typical user, other than the annoyance factor, automatic updates are usually the way to go. Most people don't run much third-party software that could be potentially borked by the updates, and most popular 3rd party vendors are quick on the uptake. Once you do start being more of a power user, or running something unusual (say, software that runs scientific instruments, whose vendors are typically very slow to catch up to OS changes) then you might have issues, but at that point you also need to become proficient at managing/mitigating your own risk.
The cloud stuff, I dunno. I walked away from Windows for personal use when Vista came out (coincidentally, also about the time I no longer had to support Windows users at work) and jumped to Mac, which is much kinder to my command-line comfort-zone soul.
When I can no longer find hardware so I can continue to use Win7, I will have to switch to Linux. Not looking forward to that day. I wonder why you suggest an older version of Linux? What's wrong with a new version?
I would definitely NOT suggest an older version of Linux, especially if you're not a linux person. Security updates need to happen there too. Linux is awesome, but it's definitely not for everybody.
Mint is def. nice, in terms of usability for people used to Windows, with the robustness of an ubuntu backend and the (IMHO much better) cinnamon desktop manager. It's what I provide to beginning CS students.
My $.02.