I agree basically with Mr. Red. I have never seen the advantage to upgrading every program... and especially to operating systems... until & unless there are clear & specific advantages that affect YOU.

I went from WIN 3.1 to WIN 98 to WIN XP to WIN 7... after reading all the reviews and when needing to replace PCs. I skipped all the interim versions which largely were money making projects for MicroSoft. 'New' systems are a major source of income for them... of course they will offer a new one every few years, whether one is 'needed' or not. Of course they can offer a few tweaks and 'features' with any update-- just ask yourself whether YOUR usage patterns needs to be 'cutting edge'.. and whether you might cut yourself on the new cutting edge.

WIN 8 was rushed out to work on portable devices, and had its problems on decks. 8.1 was rushed out to correct a lot of those problems. Several good people have said that "WIN 8.1 works fine" for them 'after a few tweaks' and with some practice. I don't see too many comments on new advantages.

caveat emptor

(by the way...this post was done on a WIN98 machine which is "no longer supported", but which is still going fine...using an Opera browser which is "no longer recognized" by many sites...)