Win8 is not as bad as most people think, but it isn't great. 8.1 was a bit better, but we're still back to the MS standard of every other release being being crap. I still don't get the reasoning behind skipping Win9, but whatever. I have Win 8 on a system at home - actually paid for a copy to see what the hoopla was about. It's workable, but I guess to me, all they needed to do to make more people happy was to include a full desktop mode instead of forcing everyone to an entirely new interafce. it seems pretty stable, but things are hard to find for what seems like no reason.
Along with that, I refuse to pay the "Mac Tax" (sounds like the Harley Tax to me), they charge way too much for their stuff, and honestly, the couple times I've been at a Mac, they don't seem as intuitive as they claim. dealing with the wife's iPhone is bad enough for me. I build my own systems and usually have a Winbox and a linux one.