I’ve been on 8.1 since it was released (free upgrade from 8) and IMO it’s as good as Windows 7. So have I. I just don't get the hate for Win 8. Well maybe I do, some people just NEED to insist that every other Windows release sucks. That might have been true (I hated Vista) but it's BS when it comes to Win 8. My company forced 8 upon us and I loved it right from the start. Okay, maybe I am more tech savvy than most, I develop websites in Windows and Linux, so it was easy for me to adjust to it. But my wife, who has been using only Win 7 the last few years, had her PC die last weekend. We bought a new HP laptop that had Windows 8.1 installed and she picked it up instantly and has lost no productivity in any of her business apps. My wife hates change and is definitely not tech savvy. So how come she had no problem yet others do?
Haters gonna hate.
I think the only legit beef was having it boot to the Start screen by default, an issue that they were pretty quick to fix. Booting to the Metro interface is fine for tablets but stupid for laptops & desktops. The only other issues I had were that Firefox wasn’t playing nice with it (solved by installing Waterfox, a 64-bit Firefox build) and I had to hunt around to get at some of the settings. But as you said, a lot of people panic over the slightest change.