Which personal Windows settings should I enable during Windows Setup?

I have no doubt that some people will have very strong opinions on some of these settings, but I think that the second word of your posting title sums it up pretty well: "personal". Many of these are purely personal preference and will vary from person to person. Some of them, you may be able to decide upon really easily. For example, "Online Speech recognition" would be useless to me since I don't use that feature at all. Therefore, no reason to enable it.

Remember too that you are free to experiment with these. You can always test and then flip the setting the other way later.

I've no doubt that stronger opinions will follow ...

hsehestedt said:

I have no doubt that some people will have very strong opinions on some of these settings, but I think that the second word of your posting title sums it up pretty well: "personal". Many of these are purely personal preference and will vary from person to person. Some of them, you may be able to decide upon really easily. For example, "Online Speech recognition" would be useless to me since I don't use that feature at all. Therefore, no reason to enable it.

Remember too that you are free to experiment with these. You can always test and then flip the setting the other way later.

I've no doubt that stronger opinions will follow ...

How do you feel about the Basic or Full choice for diagnostics feedback and the Tailored experiences option for diagnostics? ...beneficial to the user or just an excuse to gather more of your data?

sportsfan148 said:

How do you feel about the Basic or Full choice for diagnostics feedback and the Tailored experiences option for diagnostics? ...beneficial to the user or just an excuse to gather more of your data?

The Full data is more beneficial to Microsoft for their development of Windows than it is to the individual user.

Microsoft said:

...the additional information we collect at Full makes it easier for us to identify and fix issues and make product improvements that benefit all Windows customers.

https://support.microsoft.com/help/4...rosoft-privacy

sportsfan148 said:

How do you feel about the Basic or Full choice for diagnostics feedback and the Tailored experiences option for diagnostics? ...beneficial to the user or just an excuse to gather more of your data?

If you want Windows to perform at it's maximum capability, put it on full. You can tailor it afterwards.

Edwin said:

People need to rid their minds of the tinfoil hat notion that these companies are gathering your information, so that they can eventually track you down, harvest your vital organs and sell them to a foreign country for diabolical anatomical experiments!!! (not pointing any fingers!!!)

If you want Cortana to book a hotel, or make an appointment, or find a product, or call a friend, she needs to who you are, where you are, who your friends/contacts are, what amenities are in close proximity, etc.

Simple as that! Same with Google, Alexa, etc.

Hi Edwin, Ive been using my PC for nearly a year with all of the choices that I list enabled so I didn't ask the question because of privacy concerns. I was questioning the validity of enabling some of the selections because of additional resources that might be taken up (RAM etc) needlessly if the benefit to the PC user is only minimal. Im no expert so I don't know..thats why I was asking. Im thinking along the same lines as Bree says above "The Full data is more beneficial to Microsoft for their development of Windows than it is to the individual user."
I tried Cortana for several months but for me its not worth the additional resources because I didn't get much use out of it at all. Again though..that's just my personal choice.

Personally I turn them all off or down to a minimum. I also go into Privacy > Background apps and turn off almost all of them.

Not because of privacy worries, more for sportsfan148's concern about "additional resources that might be taken up (RAM etc) needlessly".