I upgraded from 7 to 8 just before the price was jacked up recently, and if I had to do it all over, I would probably choose instead to perform a vasectomy on my self without anesthesia, while under the influence of Mescaline.
I purchased the online download and spent the next 48 hours trying to escape from the purgatory of being trapped between Windows 7 and Windows 8 with neither working. I wish I could describe in detail all of the problems and crashes, but my mind seems to have blocked these memories, fortunately.
The one thing I do remember is reluctantly reformatting the hard drive on my desktop. If you do this, remember what 'they' have been telling us since the early days of DOS, "Backup your data." To this, I would add, "Do not try this at home."
At first, I was kind of amazed by the Metro interface, then I tried to use it by adding 'apps'. Who knew that these apps would run in the background and choke a quad core desktop with 6 G's of RAM? And, where was everything? There is NO START BUTTON.
So, here I am now with W8 and there is no way that I'm going to try to restore W7 after my previous excursion into Microsoft Hell. I decided to just remain in this living Hell without a "Start Button", which necessitates using the W8 replacement interface. I would describe this screen in detail, but I won't... because PCTSD (Personal Computer Traumatic Shock Syndrome).
The upside- W8 boots and powers down very quickly, which is a good thing. The other improvement is..... uh, nothing. I haven't used W8 on a touchscreen tablet or Windows phone, which is what it was designed for I suppose.
The built-in preference for finger swiping became obvious when I discovered that when I had multiple tabs open and applications running, my wireless mouse and keyboard developed a terrible case of lag (5-10 seconds). The cursor would disappear and no amount of of gesturing (including slamming it on the desk like trying to drive a ten-penny nail with a greasy ball peen hammer) would locate it until W8 decided it was time to make it reappear. Same for the keyboard. Occasionally, my PC would totally freeze, which required a reboot. Perusing PC forums indicated that I was not alone.
Thankfully, I found a $4.99 program that ended my frustration with this sorry excuse of an operating system. If you have upgraded to W8, I highly recommend "Start8". This little ditty boots directly to the Windows desktop eliminating the new Metro interface. And best of all, it restores the "Start Button" on the task bar.
I am not affiliated with Start8.
Now my computer looks and acts just like it did when I was using Windows 7.
The End.