I agree with you, I often find I like Microsoft's services and subsidiary products (those you listed).
I also use the crap out of Excel.
But he's right Windows is taking a dive. And other Microsoft products. Example number 1: Excel has these cheesy glide animations that do nothing but slow down imports.
I export a report from quickbooks to excel and if it's a large one it almost feels like Excel will crash just from processing so many animations.
I tried turning it off, but it's not as easy as it looks.