For the main initial one, near 10x the resource use of 95/98/NT/2000, to accomplish apparently nothing more but pointless shiny.

Then when I moved to SuSe, with KDE3, I saw they had even far greater shiny, for near 10x less resource use. Further confirming my leaving Windows and all proprietary. And further making me wonder what the resources were being squandered on. Also, I dont recall the specifics, but there was rumors going around of various spyware in there too, and some compatibility difficulties with some of the software I was using at the time, and no apparent means to work around it.

Also, shortly after, I learned of M$ Window's subliminal messaging system, and one drunken night with a couple of rotters on the outer fringe of our friends network, we messed around with it on a friend's computer (with WinXP), largely thinking it wouldn't be effective. But oh boy was it effective [just one example, as a new Linux user, I put in "get red hat", and days/weeks later, utterly uncharacteristically, he bought a red fedora!]. Really glad I put the brakes on the more foul stuff they wanted to put in the messages. Gets one wondering what messages the corporation put in.