I've been using Windows 8.1 since January. It's pretty good, even though during February it crashed and I lost a bunch of stuff (which was pretty much my fault, a game froze up and i tried shutting off the computer through start menu and then forcefully turned it off), it's still held out. Even though at first it was a bit odd, you'll get used to it. The desktop mode is just like Windows 7, except the start menu isn't circular.
However, you can do pretty much the exact same stuff on your start menu like you could in Windows 7. All you have to do is just right click on it and bam, you've got search, file explorer, computer, etc and a bunch of other stuff. Thing is though, it doesn't look as pretty since it just seems to be a right click menu.
Most of the stuff I would say is pretty much what Sir Dooble just said, it's a good OS, has some pretty fast start-up times. I'd say it's a good upgrade from Windows 7 since Windows 7 support is soon to end. Also, it's default Antivirus that it comes with is just Microsoft Security Essentials, just a different name.
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