I share your beef. I resent Windows at all but when OEMs don't provide
disks and instead occupy valuable real estate it is annoying. It may seem
like a trifle in terms of disk space but it is not if you need to worry
about the NUMBER of partitions --- and I do. I like to test distros and
that means lots of partitions. Ubuntu occupies two plus the swap and
Windows two, that makes five. You need to know about extended and logical
partitions even to get your feet wet. You need to be a guru to do much
beyond testing one or two. I never wanted to know about many things, but it
is learn or not be able to do what you want. I don't like roadblocks and
resent unnecessary ones.