I wonder how hard would it be to just switch back to Windows 7 for these kinds of cases? Obviously the most ideal solution is to use Linux but there's still some edge cases where Windows is needed or is just preferred. If you install Windows 7 in a VM you'll be blown away by having a simple, clean OS that just runs applications and doesn't shove ads or Bing search into the start menu. And obviously it would be vulnerable to software exploits but if the device is mostly kept offline I can't see many issues with that coming up. Something to think about...