"To offer window or nothing seems mean spirited."
Totally disagree. A window seat is a significant improvement over a middle to my mind. But maybe I'm mean? And it's a moot point with us. When Mr. W flies with me, we do window and aisle. We are pretty good about keeping the cross-chat to a minimum if there is a middle seat pax.
But more than once we've had the person who sits there cheerily offer to swap with one of us, but we politely say no thanks and take that as our cue to cut the cross-chat from limited to zero.