... my first disclosure. Man, it feels weird doing this.
update 6/6/16 I would like to stress something: I'm not saying "Don't buy an ASUS device" -- I see a lot of people who want to lambaste ASUS for this and boycott their hardware. This isn't what I want people to be doing by any stretch. Stupidly, I like the ASUS hardware I have (it's nice for the price) and I would rather see a pressure on ASUS as an OEM to stop shipping "value added software" to consumers; If you want to help Microsoft in pushing this mentality, go buy a signature machine from them. Microsoft provides support, but also only ships windows and a few select utilities that are essential to the functioning of the system (think: Radeon/Optimus and nVidia control panels) and fall heavily on the hardware makers (ATI, nVidia, Intel) to provide support for the harware.
Consider an ASUS device all you want. Start putting pressure on Microsoft that consumers want bloat-free devices and start voting with your money. Microsoft's store