Windows 8.1 works fine on a non touchscreen laptop.
That's nice. I am a desktop/workstation type. I need horsepower, not portability.
Wife has a Win 8 laptop. I have diddled it enough so that I can use is in a rudimentary form, but it took far too much. Most idiotic interface ever. Would love to hear the logic (hah!) behind it. Yes, dumped the airhead smartphone look, but still.
Just ordered a Dell desktop Intel i7 XPS with Win 7. That should tide me over without too much culture shock, until MS gets their head out of the old orifice with the next OS. Figured I better grab a Win 7 box now while one the way I wanted was available. As others have pointed out, every other OS seems to be the good one.