Win 8 is a great system...on touch technology platforms. It is not, however, very good for platforms absent that technology.
They made the same mistake here that they did with Vista, they released an OS made for hardware that is not in wide use at the moment.
I did not have any issues with Vista but I was running them on machines that were up to speed for the OS.
Right now I have Win 8 on one compatible platform; no real issues.
The bottom line is don’t upgrade just because there is a new OS. Understand the issues before committing.
Win 8 may be great for kiosks and phones .
Most businesses and home users still use keyboards and mice.
Many corporations are still XP because it works .
I bought a new machine with Win 8 preloaded (Lenovo Twist) and found the biggest problem is that Win 8 needs exceptional power behind it or it crashes regularly. My machine has an i5 processor and 4 GB RAM, and I have to reboot 5 times a day because something stops working ... and on Win 8, it is weird because when something stops (like hyperlinks) working, there are NO error messages ... it just sits there letting me click away but doing nothing. Win 8 is the new Vista, but that may be too mean to Vista. Win 8 is the new Win ME.
At my work, they had a lot of problems with Vista. Not sure if it was the hardware we were running it on or IT didn’t know how to deal with the quirks or something else. Vista wound up being alright but it took a few months for it be OK.
I chose XP for my new home computer during the conversion. Then I got Win 7 for a later new computer. I like Win 7 and I’m hearing that 8 sucks but I’ve never used it.