I mean, I can see how you might come away with that impression but the argument seems to boil down to 'better jump in now than later' but admittedly without a compelling reason other than seemingly exaggerating the difficulty of upgrading 8.1 to an OS that's fundamentally based upon it anyway (and to someone who spent far more time than necessary researching prior to the last OS jump, as mentioned), should I be forced to following some hypothetical, irrecoverable hardware failure and where W10 is apparently the only OS possible to use for the rebuild (must have been a pretty grave system failure ).
Let me preface this by saying very little of this will help convince you to switch, in fact most these responses will make you want to stay with Win8.
I did not exaggerate the problem you read it as me exaggerating it, it's a matter of ease. You know your system, you know it works, now is the best time to do an OS upgrade. Not when you finally decide to do a hardware upgrade or you are forced to and then run into problems along with an unknown system. It's much easier to do it with a known system than an unknown one. Computer troubleshooting 101, eliminate variables.
As for hardware failure, upgrades happen, power spikes happen, motherboards fail. You exactly can't go buy a brand new 4th gen Intel motherboard down the street.
Can you get Win8 onto newer hardware, yes, but it's messy and it lacks all the proper drivers, the few that did get released have actually started to be suppressed. There used to be a Gigabit(?) tool to make Win7 and 8 bootable on newer hardware, that has been taken down.
I think this is something people do not understand, MS and big companies (not just Intel and AMD), they want 7 and 8 dead just as much as MS does. It means fewer drivers to support and that means less Q&A. It's far cheaper to support one OS than it is to support 3 or 4. They are actively working against you. Are there workarounds for all of it? Mostly, but that will become less and less as time goes on. I doubt you will see support for PCIE 4.0 in Win8 in any form, same with Gen 4 USB, will it work in 3.0 mode, maybe, but it depends on how aggressive the companies become about it. Nvidia and AMD could completely cripple backwards GPU support and Intel could cripple Thunderbolt support and as USB and Thunderbolt merge, that could take down that system as well.
Best reason to do it now is like I said, you know your system works and it's stable. It's not really your choice long term companies are already cutting 7 and 8 support. I guess what I'm really saying is get with it, or leave Windows because what you want to do is unsustainable.
More?
Better underpinnings, it has better networking, better security, gets priority over other OS for security patches, it gets priority on drivers, it has new optimizations for general computing, hardware and gaming. Mostly though, it's not being deprecated out of existence. Win8 is DEAD, stick a fork in it, it's done. 7 is actually more alive than 8 is despite being older, Linux users outnumber Win8 users, it's that dead. I won't be surprised if AV companies start abandoning it due to lack of users, there's so little money left in it. One has already left 7.
I'm no fan of Win10, I can give you a TON of reasons not to switch to it, but if you are staying with Windows you will eventually have to switch.
As for documenting details about W10 it allows one to see the directions the OS has taken over time. It's categorized and not limited just to bugs. Though in regards to bugs if we look at a particularly egregious example from the end of last year, the Documents wiping bug, I would have been affected had I used the OS since the specific criteria that triggered it I happen to meet (using a directory named 'Documents' in the root user directory that isn't assigned as the OS designated Documents location since I use that as a honeypot).
You are collecting a list of problems, current or not, when the time comes your first excuse will be "it's fine for now why ditch Win8", then as time goes on you will resort more and more to your list and the fact that "it works fine as it is". You may have started with the right intentions, but we are now 4 years into Windows 10 it's time to sh*t or get off the pot.
I know about that "bug", it's a feature, at least it is now, it may not have been on purpose but how many signed up for One Drive as a result.
Honestly, in some ways, it was a good thing. Getting people to make backups is nearly impossible until they experience data loss, as word spread I had quite a few people actually ask me about it rather than me trying to hit them over the head with the fact that they needed it.
Several users within different communities I'm part of have had their system or data borked from updates, with one I know who lost some of their work due to it, including something they were making for that community. I have daily backups so such scenarios wouldn't have been as severe a setback for me as they have been for others but it's hardly minor or even that uncommon to see updates impacting users' trust like that.
Those communities are just reinforcing your reasons, I've also seen and lost data as well as an expensive ssd to it (thanks MS!).
I won't say it can't happen, it does.
This is the new normal.
Is it right? Nope, but it is the new norm. Again, we are 4 years in, if you haven't switched willingly by now, you probably will only do it when forced. There is no "next Windows", so it's not like XP users waiting for 7 or 8 users waiting for 10. This is it.
Btw would still be interested in the entirely hidden telemetry backports if you have more details. The German government commissioned an investigation into W10's telemetry (since they needed to understand it by law) and through a deep dive identified which aspects of the OS handle it, which were the same things found in backported telemetry for previous Windows versions but perhaps there's something else that's worth looking into.
Telemetry is not a new service, it's built into existing systems.
A good example is drivers, if you block enough of telemetry, Windows cannot even look for drivers when you attach a new device. So if you're looking for a new entry in services or task manager it's not there. This is exactly what happened to me when I did this on Win10. It's known that many security updates had it included without notifying users that it carried that payload. So while some said they were for telemetry, some were actual security updates but included that along with it. I have a list of them somewhere, some are easy to figure out, others less so, same with their deviousness.
Also, the backported telemetry lacks even the rudimentary controls that Win10 has. You have zero control over it, though to be fair the controls for privacy in Win10 are mostly there to make you feel like you have control (door close buttons on elevators are the same).