Stick with Windows 7 or upgrade to Windows 8?

[Wokki]

I'm currently using Windows 7, as I've been doing for the past 5 years or so. Recently I got a Windows 8.1 licence in my hands and now I have the chance to upgrade. The only question is, is it worth it?
I use my computer for gaming, watching streams, photoshop and coding. Would I benefit from the upgrade in any of these tasks, or would it be just waste of time? Should I perhaps just wait for Windows 10 instead?

Help me decide?

 

[FatalLulz]

With Windows 10 not that far away you'd be better off waiting for that instead of upgrading to Windows 8. It makes it 1 uppgrade not 2. Meaning it halves your chances of anything going wrong :

 

[Lib]

With Windows 10 not that far away you'd be better off waiting for that instead of upgrading to Windows 8. It makes it 1 uppgrade not 2. Meaning it halves your chances of anything going wrong :

also i do believe windows 10 should not have many bugs as their previous versions, so waiting some months more cant be a big deal since u did it 1 year already. So indeed what FatalLulz said waiting for win10 is the best thinng you could do?

 

[Droppy]

Well, first of all you need to think about what you need/the hard thing about formatting/updating.

You have the chance of change now, or when Windows 10 is arrived, because, lets be honest, Windows 7 is outdated.

Since you have Windows 8.1, you will get 1 year free update on Windows 10, so that's a plus.

Windows 8.1 is way faster than Windows 7 aswell, it just takes longer to get used to it.

 

[Shorty]

Just wait until Windows 10, so much better than 8 & 8.1+

 

[Mucski]

You don't have to wait for windows 10. It is basically windows 8 with added start bar and increased transparency. However to the question whether you should upgrade to windows 8, YES YOU SHOULD! They have improved a lot of things, and I could list you the whole change log, but let's just say it's around 50% faster than windows 7. However keep in mind that there are a few issues with programs that require "administrator" rights, as well some legacy applications.

 

[Droppy]

You don't have to wait for windows 10. It is basically windows 8 with added start bar and increased transparency. However to the question whether you should upgrade to windows 8, YES YOU SHOULD! They have improved a lot of things, and I could list you the whole change log, but let's just say it's around 50% faster than windows 7. However keep in mind that there are a few issues with programs that require "administrator" rights, as well some legacy applications.

It has a lot more of features, but you could use Windows 8 until Windows 10 is launched.

I kinda agree with shorty on this, speacially if the OP haves an win phone or xbox one

 

[Wokki]

Windows 7 does work quite slowly at times for me, even though I have it installed in SSD. I've also done the SSD optimizations but that doesn't seem to solve them.
Some applications also perform slowly at times, like Firefox. Not quite sure if that's just Firefox related though. I also get random BSOD's when playing Dota 2, but those are only once a month or so.

I don't know if these issues are related to the applications themselves, the OS or my hardware.

@Mucski Games are my main fear right now. I play quite a bit of games with my friends and if a game doesn't work on Windows 8.1 but does on Windows 7, I'd be pretty sad.
I guess most recent games should work without any issues, but as you mentioned legacy applications, I guess this also includes some old games.

@Droppy I don't have a Windows Phone or Xbox One. I do not plan to get Windows Phone either. Xbox One maybe, but not anytime soon.

EDIT: After a little while, I decided to do it and test it for a while. If I don't like it, I will return back to Windows 7. But so far, it seems fine to me.
EDIT2: My thoughts about Windows 8.1 so far. Not that big of a difference, at least nothing noticable. It doesn't feel faster, in fact some action seem slower. I could before watch 2 streams same time on source quality, now other must be medium.