I can't say that upgrade from 8 to 8.1 is a bad thing but, of course, noone want it to be forced upon him/her.
That's just a bad policy from Microsoft.

I had an awful experience with graphic card drivers when migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 8. I had a ATI with dual chips which wouldn't work but eventually I found some drivers that matched it. (I uses a Nvidia graphic card now)

Windows 8.1 works fine for me now (feels more stable and uses RAM better than Windows 7, I think)

@MikeMoss
About Windows 10 ...
Any difficulties with drivers?
I use software like Poser, Adobe (Photoshop, Illustrator, AF or Indesign), Lightwave, ZBrush and Maya. Do you have any experience with those in Windows 10?
Would you recommend an update to windows 10?
(Using a Asus ROG laptop with i7, GTX 780, 16GB RAM and 256 SSD+750 SATA)