What? Fully user-controlled updates that you could set to fully manual, disable if unneeded (language packs), and do in small batches if you needed to for whatever reason, this was the golden era of Windows updates.

If anything this was the very specific point that convinced me the average anti-Windows list was full of shit. "You always get pestered with X" when it's something that can be trivially disabled in two clicks even by non-techy users.

Then when 10 came by and the same people were saying Windows updates can't be set to fully manual, my initial reaction was "yeah I'm sure it's true this time". Imagine my shock when it actually was.