Let me offer you my opinion on the subject. Lets first of all limit ourselves to talking only about the home user not the business user. With that limitation in mind you are left with this abbreviated history of Microsoft Windows Versions Skipping over the 3.x and below versions:

Windows 95 (Revolutionary change from 3.x. It was overall very good.)

Windows 98 (More of a Windows 95 v2.0 than anything, equally as good.)

Windows ME (Millennium… A rush rush mashed together piece of software more designed to ease the transition into the next generation of windows OSes. It was worthless.)

Windows XP (Revolutionary again. Huge stability and security improvement over the 9x lineup.)

Windows Vista (Garbage 2.0. It introduced many new features that where improved upon in the next Generation but where simply not ready for production at this time.)

Windows 7 (Revolutionary 3.0 I personally recommend despite it’s aging nature.)

Windows 8 (Garbage 3.0. Admittedly many improvements over Windows 7 in terms of security and speed, but shackled to a step backwards of a user interface which tried and failed to dumb down the PC to the level of a mobile device.)

Again this is simply my educated opinion, Windows 8 is the next “miss” in Window’s Hit and Miss release pattern. Skip it and go for whatever 9 is going to be called.