The reason my laptop is still on Windows 7 is a huge annoyance in 8 and 8.1 - constant disconnects from a VPN/RDP connection to work. At best, it disconnects a couple times a day, at worst, a couple times a minute. I've looked for a solution to no avail, including messing around with call times in the registry (that's been awhile, so I don't remember the details). This doesn't happen with Windows 7 at all.
I've had to roll back the occasional update because of it actually making it unable to connect, so yes, my updates are set to manual. I have to at least check and see what it wants to update before I allow it to. The desktop is 8.1 Pro, so I'm covered there. I don't really like losing Media Center, though.