I found Win8 ok but Win8.1 was good since it dialed back the stupid start-screen and under the hood it brought a lot of great functionality for support, management and for power users where it introduced the right click on the start menu for utilities.

It was also fast, I remember at the time it felt snappier than win7 then I saw a video earlier this year comparing all the recent versions vista and higher, and 8.1 came out on top for performance almost across the board