I've read some news online.. IF that's crappy journalism.. it's not my fault.
Also, I'm not going to check all MS presentations, I just need some good summaries.

Is there a way to have Windows 10 run without the internet? I've read that a lot of services on there are internet-dependent.

Windows 10 is great. A lot of people won't like the aesthetics. I can do everything I could with Windows 7. There are new neat things, like Continuum. Some people won't like the MS account.

It's a good OS - people who hate it will hate it. There are people who still won't go to Windows 7 because of Vista. But 7 became the new XP in terms of people loving it and hanging on to it.

Who knows if 10 will become the next 7? But at least it isn't the new Vista.

Or worse, Windows ME....ugh.

Dude, I'm not looking for bad news, I'm hoping for good ones.
But I follow some news site and they stated that info, so I obviously believed them and I was shocked.
Of course I'm also a bit suspicious about MS, due to the past unwelcome forced changes with Win8 (for me).
If that news is bulls**t, I'm relieved, but I need proof (from the media).

Not having read the articles you have, I can't say I know if they posted the info correctly or not. I'm just giving a possible explanation on why people can get different meanings from the very same statements.

Windows Spotlight: a personal lockscreen that tailors information based on your interest.

Images: it has the ability to shuffle images on your lockscreen based on your current lockscreen image or your desktop background. If you have a lake set as the lockscreen image, through machine learning and Bing, it would try to find images of similar lakes and place them on the lockscreen, giving you a fresh new look every time you see the lockscreen.
Features in Windows: if you have done something related to X, it would give you a suggestion to try out feature X. Such as, if you have used the search bar in File Explorer, it could give you a suggestion to try out Cortana's voice search for the same thing. Enables better features discoverability.
Apps: if you have used Paint, and been searching for crayons or brushes online through Bing, it could try to suggest you to try out the Fresh Paint app, that simulates painting with crayons and brushes.

Don't like something about Spotlight? Go into your privacy settings in the Settings app, and modify them to suit your wishes or disable Spotlight all together.

Don't believe everything you read online, most of it comes from uneducated, tech illiterate "journalists" with 0 investigative journalism skills.

Don't worry. We laugh at the cavemen that are still using XP for because the newer ways of doing things are "bad" and "stupid" and "confusing". As time passes, we'll start laughing at the cavemen stuck on 7.

Because we all know, how stupid is to say "Cortana, send email to Larry, Dude do you wanna hang out tonight?" in 3 seconds instead of opening up a web browser, going to the email provider's website, and typing that like a professional cavemen.

Does DirectDraw work on WIN 7? Because with Windows 8.1, I only had two real complaints. And games in the fashion of Diablo, Desperados... not working was a significant drawback.

Dunno what you were doing, but Diablo worked in 8.1 by default for me, whereas in 7 it didn't.

I never liked or needed such features, so it's good if it can be completely disabled (except for the normal lockscreen).
I still wonder, however, why this should be included in an OS as default.
I obviously don't believe everything I find, but you must trust at least someone.

Caveman here, due to money restrictions, dislike for new Windows versions, plus various reasons.
You know, "new" doesn't automatically mean "good", nor it's mandatory.

You can test it out just right now! Personally, I didn´t ran into any problems with my GOGlib when trying out Win 10...
...but I did only install a little collection at that time, not even 1/10th of my library!
Do some experiments yourself and you´´ll see!

Referring to those actively preaching everywhere they go to users to hate something because they are afraid of change or new things, not those that don't have a choice.

Hmmm, so does that mean it's going to be a failure (you know, some believe there's a pattern: Win2000/good/-WinMe/bad/-WinXP/good/-Vista/bad/ and so on)?

That pattern is so stupidly bad that it is hilarious when someone tries to use it.