I liked it so much I put it on 3 machines the week of it's release. If you are running 8 or 8.1 and you like the original style of windows vs. a tablet wannabe OS, then go for it! It has been stable for me. I had a major crash as well, but that was my hard drive going kaput. I threw in a 1TB SSD, and this laptop screams! 15 second boot time. It has been very stable since. The only thing I don't like is the Edge browser, and IE 11 isn't much better(which also ships with 10 but is not the default, at least it wasn't when I installed it). Neither seem to handle video very well, at least for me, they crash too often. Windows 10 is the future, (it has been said it will be the last; I don't know if that is true or not) and if you don't upgrade within the first year, you'll have to fork over $100.
EDIT: As for backward compatibility, I have had no issues whatsoever, in fact, I have a couple old TGC applications that work in 10, 8,8.1, XP and '98, but would fail in 7 and Vista (Tree Magik and Plant Life). As for GG working flawlessly, no, it doesn't, but I'm pretty sure that's not Windows' fault. Does GG work flawlessly on any OS? If so, please share!
MAME Cab PC: i7 4770@3.4Ghz (passmark 9945), 12GB RAM, Win 8.1/64, GeForce GTX645 (passmark 1898); Shiny new laptop: i7 4800MQ@2.7Ghz (passmark 8586), 16GB RAM, Win 8.1/64, GeForce GTX870M (passmark 3598); Old laptop: i5@2.3Ghz, 8GB RAM, Win 7/64, Intel 3000 graphics
