I moved from W7 to W8 within the first week after the official release. W8 had better security, was a bit more responsive, the missing Start Menu wasn't a problem because of Classic Shell, and pleasantries like booting to the Start Screen and the Charms were possible to be disabled. Last but not least, the official (and documented by Microsoft) registry setting to keep it from nagging about upgrading to W10 worked 100% flawlessly─very unlike all the various hacks for W7 that were supposed to do the same. Then finally, telemetry became no longer possible to fully be disabled on W7, and serious bugs started to appear as a result of Windows updates on W7, and W8.1. But, compared to W8.1, overall these bugs were significantly worse on W7. You had to really love Botch Tuesdays during those times. I am talking about the kind of bugs that weren't possible to be fixed right away and that broke important functionality, stuff that got you stuck with a half baked workaround for a prolonged period of time, in some cases AFAIK actually no workaround would even exist in any way at all. You know, Ballmer sickness... lol Eventually those problems went away, for the most part.
When W10 came out, I waited until New Year 2018 before moving to it─by getting myself another new laptop. (Essentially, usually, these days moving to the next Windows is the equivalent of paying another visit to the local grocery store... lol) I witnessed W10 early troubles first hand (on my dad's desktop PC). I did manage to get them all easily fixed simply by googling for explanations like I always do. But, compared to fixing W10 early troubles, staying on W8.1 (until after W10 Fall Creators Update wrinkles had been ironed out at least) was an overall much smoother─or overall less bumpy─"experience" type thing, or kind of affair. IMO and IME anyway.
