but Windows 8 sucks.
I held off getting rid of XP until about a month ago when it became obvious that I needed to bite the bullet. I decided to upgrade to Win8 despite the claims of how bad it is just so I would have the latest system. So I upgraded to Win8 on three desktop machines and also have a tablet and phone using Win8. I have been pleasantly surprised. On the desktops I just boot to the Windows desktop rather than the tiles using Start8, which makes it just like using XP except more robust. The tiles are basically useless for anything other than a touchscreen, but I use them on my touchscreens and they are quite nice. So far all the machines have been rock solid.