My computer is 3 years old and I’m running Win7. I’m happy with it. I’ve never tried Win8 but I’ve heard the horror stories.
Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell isn’t bad. I’m told it has some behind the scenes improvements, but none that I notice. My Windows 7 laptop was dying (I suspect the hard drive is going bad) so I switched over to a cheap Windows 8 laptop and did the downloads to get it to 8.1 and then tweaked it and finally got something that seems like Windows 7 to me.
If they make Windows 9 free, then I’ll consider it an apology by MS for screwing up Windows 8.