[ikk157]

 Furthermore, the difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 may not be worth it for the change - as I'd probably have to find a whole new set of drivers for my hardware moving from Windows 7 to 8.1. I doubt if I choose to go for Windows 8.1 that I'll stay long with it.

Actually, from experience, finding drivers won’t seem to be as much of an issue as it seems to be.

For both laptops that I’ve upgraded to windows 8.1, I haven’t really faced any issues with drivers. That is for two reasons:

First off, almost everything worked perfectly without having it install its drivers at all!!!

And for the things that required the drivers to work, which are:

The display on my own laptop (since it won’t display windows on the entire screen without the driver), along with the network adapter (since for some odd reason, without the driver of the network adapter, the network speeds were insanely slow)

And the trackpad drivers for my friend’s pc (since I simply wanted to bring back functionality to the button that disables the trackpad, however the trackpad itself worked fine without the driver!)

And in all of these cases, the windows 7 drivers directly from the manufacturer website worked perfectly on windows 8.1 with no issues whatsoever!

I really encourage you to upgrade to Windows 8.1, I can’t express just how much of a performance boost it provides! You seem to still be convinced on remaining on Windows 7. But trust me, the upgrade is absolutely worth! Simply take a backup of your windows 7 installation, and you can always go back if things don’t work out for you.