Windows 8 is significantly better than Windows 7. Since it's almost exactly superset of Windows 7, this shouldn't be surprising.
That Windows 9 looks likely as an October release - that's MicroSoft's Q1/2015 - it appears MicroSoft is tick-tocking Windows releases...Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9.
They are already on a yearly cycle with many of their non-OS products.