@Pondus turns some things off, not all. Already did that
@polonus haha dude, You are correct, but how about you just pretend that I know what i'm doing and stick to the question. Can I turn any of it off? I lock down systems tight, disable and make sure windows doesn't talk to MS, use on-demand scanners, on-demand anti-malware, choose my applications correctly and correctly set them up. Sure something is prolly getting by, and lots of web browsing is being tracked, but I can live with a certain amount of leakage (and even then if i were really paranoid i could use tor, proxies, vpns). A security program, like avast, should be able to have these things as opt-out, if you know what you are doing.
I'm not really interested in this part of the discussion, as yes there are pros and cons and i could argue both points of view well and i would concede most of your points are correct for the majority of people. But how about letting me do it my way, even if you don't agree?
Original question still stands.