I'm with rfarris on this one. Windows 8.0 was kind of a disaster but 8.1 is good. Either way there are many OS improvements over windows 7, and I would not switch back from 8.1 to any flavor of 7. I use 8.1 on several PCs at this point. I don't use Metro, the app store, etc personally -- I use it pretty much the same way I use 7.

However, if you're like my mom, stick with 7. The Metro interface confuses the crap out of her and I can't really explain to her why there are two completely different flavors of Internet Explorer, why the address bar is at the bottom of the screen because she uses the Metro IE, etc.