I actually really liked both windows 8 and Vista too.

8 was slimmed down and optimized vs 7. Bootup time on my HDD equipped machine halved, performance was better, and the search was so good I never actually saw the start menu because I'd just blindly hit enter and it opened what I wanted.

Vista had a rough start because they basically had to start fresh with drivers. But I bought a nice new machine about a year after it came out and it ran it flawlessly. Aero looked (and still looks) so cool, and XP was just a crusty old OS by then, let alone 2014 when it finally lost support.