I’m very happy with 7 on both my laptop and desktop.I’ll be skipping 8 just as I skipped Vista and ME.
My “Win7” laptop was dying and purchased a gorgeous ASUS Ultrabook with Win8 with brushed aluminum chassis and Gorilla Glass cover. I immediately upgraded to 8.1 so no experience with Win8.
That said...
My ASUS 8.1 boots to desktop almost instantaneously - blazingly fast. In comparison, my old “Win7” laptop was on a slow boat to China. Painfully slow vs my new 8.1.