I’ve been using Windows 8 the last several months for my college and gaming laptop, and over all I’ve been pretty satisfied with it compared to my previous Windows 7 computer. I’m not a huge fan of the Start screen (though I can see it working better for a tablet), but in reality you really don’t have to deal with it if you don’t want to- either download a program to makes you boot directly to the desktop, to click the desktop icon immediately. In my experience, its intrusiveness has been somewhat overstated. As for stability when it comes to games, it’s on par with Windows 7- there has only been a couple times when I’ve had issues getting a program to run on Windows 8, and it was never something that I had already successfully run on Windows 7 before (for reference, I’ve gotten Skyrim and a couple games from GOG to work with no issues).

A big thing to keep in mind is that Windows 8.1 is coming out in the near future, and supposedly it addresses a few of the common complaints with the Start screen and UI. It doesn’t sound like it fixes everything people dislike about it, but it might be worth taking into consideration if that’s something weighing heavily on your decision.

Overall, there is definitely some practical reason to stick with 7. Definitely cheaper in the short run. Still, I don’t think the transition to 8 would be nearly as bad for you as some of the reviews would indicate, and you probably would like the general improvement to stability and performance, plus the handful of other small new features compared to 7. Michael’s comparison of 8 to Vista and ME is valid, though from what I’ve heard and remember of those two, 8 is not nearly as bad of a misstep.