I'm actually going to go ahead and claim that I liked the jump from Windows 8 from 7 than I did the jump from Vista to 7.
Vista to 7 was barely a change at all. Having used Vista for the last year leading up to 7, I found it hilarious that people were throwing parades that 7 was so amazing, because other than a few additions like Jump Lists Vista and 7 were virtually identical at that time. It was pretty much a marketing rebrand.
7 to 8 was huge. After a couple of changes to the default settings the experience was far smoother. It's got some really neat things, specifically the Task Manager has been completely overhauled and is WAY more informative in what your system is doing. Somme of the visualization is great too, like graphing the speed at which your system transfers files between drives/USB thumb drives, etc.
On a technical level it's also really impressive. The optimizations are unbelievable, especially when you pair it with an SSD. Considering how old the Windows OS is, I'm amazed they were able to optimize it this well. And they seem to have finally got rid of the "Windows + Time = sludgy as shit" problem. I haven't had to reinstall the Windows partition in my computer since I installed Windows 8. The bootup is blazing fast and I still haven't even upgraded to an SSD on my main machine. It jumps between traditional windows and the elaborate Metro stuff through snapping and shit blazingly fast. It must've been a bitch to code, but it works like a dream.
And some of the metro stuff is amazing. On my surface I don't use anything other than Metro IE, even when I'm operating in "desktop mode" (hook up a USB hub, mouse+keyboard+hook up to a 1080p display). It's by far, the best tablet internet browser. It spanks any browser on a mobile device, even chrome on iPad.
So yeah, I'm seriously impressed with W8, especially after 8.1. Anyone claiming it's "bad" in any way has no fucking clue what they're talking about.