I think windows 10 is quite nice. Windows 8 is a POS.

Windows 8 was great if you went straight to the desktop and never looked back. There were some terrific upgrades to the classic desktop (even the task manager got real-time graphs and proper hierarchies for the first time).

I always pictured a really talented dev team somewhere in Redmond plugging away thanklessly on things that the powers that be thought no-one cared about (like security and usability) until one day someone decreed from on high that the whole frontend would need to "beat the iPad", and it all turned to poop.

This is speculation of course, but drawn on multiple similar experiences.

Very true. But every time I pressed the Windows key to open an application, I was reminded of the horrors that lurked outside of the desktop.

Aye, but it got me really good at just typing the program name I wanted, instead of having to go poking through that pain in the ass menu.

Once i had my most used stuff either pinned or as a desktop shortcut, 8.1 was no biggie.

For $3 you could get StartIsBack and you would never know the Start menu had changed since Windows 7, or the nature of the desktop vs. the tiles screen. That made Windows 8 work just fine for me.

For free, you can use ClassicShell. I actually forget I'm on Windows 8.1 at home vs Windows 7 at work as they're almost identical.

Or update to 10 for free too?