Re: Having just bought a new laptop...
I call BS. Win10 boots fast.
Perhaps that initial boot whereby programs are installed etc. is slower but anyone that takes the first boot time and judges the system is not really being reasonable.
Firstly, who the hell boots a machine these days? Linux or Windows; you press the button thingy and it waits patiently for you to press it again or swipe a touchpad, sipping almost zero power and coming ready in less that a second or so.
Reboots occur for the increasing rare occasions when an update requires it; the last one did for Win10, phone included.
And, as for reboots for other reasons, they are non existent on my system. I have had occasion to toggle the wireless button and, rarely, the fingerprint reader fails and requires a sleep/wake to make it go again.
I have seen a video failure, auto-fixed.
Edge can fail occasionally such that it needs restarting but reboot, not bloody likely.
And as for those funny icons things with stuff inside, I only see them accidentally when I press the Windows key. The search mechanism finds apps (or files, or file content) faster then any other, apart from those already pinned to the task bar of course.