I hear mixed messages about Mavericks - do I need it? Currently on Snow Leopard

Question

I read and hear mixed feedback on Mavericks. I am curently on Snow Leopard. I read that it's best to stay on Leopard until fixes are applied to Mavericks. The main concern or negativity about Mavericks is that it is slow. Question, stay or upgrade. I am sure that this debate has gone on before. If someone can to point to an outcome or a discussion thread. Thanks.
my iMac specs:
Hardware Overview:
  Model Name:          iMac
  Model Identifier:          iMac12,2
  Processor Name:          Intel Core i5
  Processor Speed:          2.7 GHz
  Number of Processors:          1
  Total Number of Cores:          4
  L2 Cache (per Core):          256 KB
  L3 Cache:          6 MB
  Memory:          8 GB
MAC OS 10.6.8

Answer 1

RK from OZ wrote:
I read and hear mixed feedback on Mavericks.
You will always see this with any major version release
of any operating system, OSX or Windows.
I read that it's best to stay on Leopard until fixes are applied to Mavericks.
At this point, Mavericks is probably as stable as any other version of OSX.
A large majority of issues stem from 3rd party app or 3rd party hardware
comapatibility issues.  Make sure everything you have is compatible or
you are willing to upgrade the items to be compatible.
The main concern or negativity about Mavericks is that it is slow.
Again, this is likely 3rd party incompatibility issues.  There may be some
initial slowness (as is true anytime OSX is upgrade) until Spotlight indexes
all the files on the drive(s).  Personally, my 2011 MiniServer and my 2011
13" MBP run great on Mavericks.
Question, stay or upgrade.
That is something you need to answer yourself.  As others
have said, if you don't want or need any of the new features
and are happy with everything as it is, "if it ain't broke, don't
fix it."
Otherwise, go ahead and upgrade.  A word of warning, as is true
with any major OS upgrade, anything can go wrong (Murphy's Law),
so make sure that you make backups of all important data (which you should
be doing anyway).