I agree that win8 set a low bar, but so did vista, fact is 7 was much better and 10 follows that same progression.
Did we use the same OS? I didn't really like the full screen app stuff but Windows 8 was fast and stable for me while Windows 10 to this day feels slower.
Case in point. Click start, settings, and look at the window that pops up. Where are the settings to add a new wifi AP? This is something you will do quite often if you have a laptop or tablet. Ohh wait, did you get the menu that actually has all the settings in it? Because there are two. Windows decides somewhat randomly which one to present you with. What sense does that make?
I'm surprised you're even able to make use of the search because that's also horrible and loves to swap out the result you wanted last second so you open up something else random. It's also incredibly slow and tries to hamfist bing search results and stupid suggestions to install apps instead of just searching your computer.
Now I use Everything (voidtools). And I put it as the first pinned item in my taskbar so I can do Win+1 to access it quickly.
For what it is worth, Cortana has been basically entirely turned off in either 20H1 or 20H2 on new installs.
> It places ads in the start menu.
It's less annoying about that if you pay the $99 for the upgrade from Home to Pro.
> Case in point. Click start, settings, and look at the window that pops up. Where are the settings to add a new wifi AP?
Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi > Show all available networks
Though that just opens the window for you that you'd get if you clicked the Network Indicator button directly on the Taskbar which is the fastest/direct path. (It wouldn't have occurred to me to try to path to it from the Settings app, though it is interesting that you can.)
I'm on pro. Have been since the start. It still shoves bing results and app suggestions and all sorts of other stuff into the start menu by default. I've long since turned all that stuff off, so maybe it's improved...