Nothing wrong with 8.1.
Slap Classic Shell on it, turn off all the Metro junk, it's pretty much Windows 7 with knobs on and the only real difference is when things want to jump into Metro for no good reason (e.g. some settings options).
Literally, this place was a Windows 7 shop, that had tried to upgrade to 8 "naively" (i.e. not tried to customise it at all) and it was a disaster and reverted and "never again". I took over the IT, silently started rolling out 8.1 with Classic Shell and NOBODY noticed or cared and still haven't 4 years later. The only thing they noticed was the organisation logo in the start menu button, because I put it there as a bit of branding, and they all loved it. That's something that, as far as I know, you can't do with basic Windows alone with all kinds of messy editing.
It's about how you manage it, not the fact that it's 7 / 8.1 / 10. The problem is that I consider 10 too big a leap for my users at the moment so I will lump it together with a load of other big-leaps so they just have to bite the bullet and change the way the work once, rather than 3-4 times over for different things. But that will happen when ALL my suppliers support 10 properly (and have done for a whlle, not just said "we now work on 10"), and the banks etc. are dragging their feet on that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
