I'm still a windows 7 user,but for a couple of days I've been wondering if I should move to Win 8.1. I've never had problems adapting to new things.I And I did use windows 8 for a while(for some reason i had to format everything,and i just used win 7).

However,there are so many people saying bad things about win 8.1.How the interface totally sucks,and how the actual performance improvements are just a faster shutdown/boot!

What do you think? Will you move to win 8.1 anytime soon?

No, I've clicked only a few times the new tiles before going back to win7 lookalike. I've got win8 pro from ebay at ~60$ and updated last week to 8.1, because my Vista was a wreck.

Anyway my main os is Ubuntu 13.04.

I'll just upgrade to Linux Mint 16..

I'll just upgrade to Linux Mint 16..

I think i'll skip that one as well, (still running 14 on my work PC without any issues), i'm too lazy to upgrade even when its free. (i still got a PC with Win98 on it somewhere)

Touchscreen just makes it easier for my cat to hack :(

I use Windows Server 2012, tbh the Win8 features make no difference to me, not even sure why they were even included in server edition.

I do like IE10 and most likely IE11 will be a great improvement but that is about it, the rest of the features I like are server specific. Looking at the update page, it seems the only improvement I get in 8.1 is a bitlocker change.

However saying all that, the whining and crying isn't new, just have a look at the requested features forum on MS, the top requests people wanted was a UI change in VS, thousands of great suggestions that would have greatly improved languages / frameworks and a UI change is what people wanted the most /sigh, I trust the same crowd equally don't like Windows 8 due to the lack of a start button

Simply ask yourself these questions; Will upgrading help you with your work / tasks better than Win7? If yes, then get it. Will the lack of a start button or the metro UI result in you getting chronic depression and / or cancer? If yes, then don't get it.

If you're still on Windows 7 I almost see no reason to upgrade at all. I can't think of a feature on Windows 8 that is something that really isn't on Windows 7 that most people would use everyday. I've been using Windows 8 ever since its release as I got it as a free upgrade from my University. I first just dual booted between Windows 7 and Windows 8 to see if I liked using it. I then went ahead and reformatted and installed Windows 8 as my only OS and primary one. The actual OS isn't bad at all and it works, and the laptop I am on isn't a touchscreen so I don't even use those features. Though is it worth an upgrade? I can't see it.

Then 8.1 came out so I went ahead and upgraded to it. The upgrade from 8 to 8.1 is worth it in my mind as I feel it clean some stuff up. Again though are these upgrades worth going from 7 to 8 or 8.1? Nope I don't see it at all unless you can just get it for free.

I myself use neither now most of the time. I have since installed Ubuntu and I am using that as my primary OS. I myself have never understood most of Microsoft Operating Systems Upgrades. In my mind I think Apple is the one doing it correctly with their OS Upgrades and have been for a little while now. Microsoft just now with Windows 8 allowed the Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 upgrade for free and made it incredible simple with it through the App Store like Apple did. Though Apple is allowing users to upgrade all the way back to Snow Leopard to upgrade to Mavericks for free.

For someone already running Windows 8 there's no reason not to upgrade -- Windows 8.1 is free, objectively and subjectively "better" than Windows 8, and doesn't represent any major paradigm shift.

As a Windows 7 user, though, it basically comes down to whether you need any of the 8/8.1 features, want to participate in the Windows Store ecosystem, and can live with the UI paradigm shift. That said, aside from being different, and sometimes a bit "in the way" by default, the new UI mode isn't bad in and of itself. Content-style applications (Games, media consumption, etc) in particular are perfectly at home in the Windows 8-style interface. For productivity apps like Word, excell, or VS, the desktop is still a better choice most times, although I can imagine, and there are starting to be, productivity apps in the Windows 8 style that are fluid and effective as long as they don't try to be all things to all people. When the hardware supports it, touch on a laptop or tablet is really nice -- its admittedly a bit forced on the desktop though. Some of the window 8 style touch gestures suck for mousing (I'm looking at you, drag-from-edge-to-X), but learning a couple keyboard shortcuts sidesteps the issue entirely.

If you're a Windows 7 user who skipped 8 because it didn't let you configure your machine to avoid the new stuff as much as you wanted, 8.1 goes even further to let you avoid it -- for example, you can boot straight into the desktop, and I think you can pin/launch windows 8-style apps from the desktop too -- then the Windows 8 start screen starts to feel less like a new environment, and more like a fancy start menu.

I was a bit resistant myself at first, but after using Windows 8 at home and at work for a month or so, and making a few tweaks, it feels as good and as fluid as Windows 7 did. I can tell because I recently upgraded to 8.1 and some settings seem to have reverted, and feel awkward again until I fix the setting.

On a technical level, both Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 are better than 7 in a lot of ways -- Your applications aren't suddenly going to run faster, but there's more and better hardware support, they consume fewer CPU and RAM resources (and also use excess RAM more effectively), boot more quickly (The new desktop I built boots from sleep in < 3 seconds, from power-off in about twice that), and the storage-spaces are pretty cool (you can pool drives together into one big space, and mark certain locations to be redundant in the case of a drive failure -- like a more-flexible RAID).

I get Windows 8 from my laptop. Hated it. A few points:

• They replaced the Start menu to a Start screen. I don't actually mind that, except the screen does not offer much practical use other than for eye candy. The live tiles are completely useless since the size is limited. Windows 8.1 seem to have fixed this by adding two more sizes. That's still pointless, IMO. If I want it live, I want to see more. For example, if I want a live weather tile, I want to resize it that I can see the weather in 5 different cities/days all at once. I don't want it to cycle through like it does today. I want to read 5 news headlines at a time, not one that cycle every 5 seconds.
  
• Why on earth did they put the "Shut Down" button under Settings?
  
• How do you close an app? When you launch certain apps from the Start screen, the ones designed for the new look, they will take up the entire screen and wont have the title bar. Which means, how do I close it? I know it's all designed for tablet and such and there is no such thing like close on tablets, but how do I close this app for good?? I don't want it to run in the background.

Overall, the whole thing feels like designed for people who don't want to care about computers, like the average users. Social apps, connectivity, clouds, fancy UI, fancy search results, it's all there. That's okay, but that means I am no longer in the Windows market. Not that I don't want to, because Microsoft has practially booted me out. Kind of like how Nintendo decided to keep making games for kids. They kicked adult gamers out of their own market. I feel like Microsoft is doing that to me now.

Once I get my hands with on an external DVD drive or a large-enough USB flash drive, I will install Linux.

Some of the window 8 style touch gestures suck for mousing (I'm looking at you, drag-from-edge-to-X), but learning a couple keyboard shortcuts sidesteps the issue entirely.

Yeah, you don't use those when using a mouse. The mouse version to get the same effect is to throw the cursor into the top left or top right corner and pull down.