Input welcome on this topic as well:
Go ahead and jump on Windows 8?
Conventional wisdom is this is the Me/Vista of today.
Most people seem to think it's great for tablets & touchscreens, but sucks without it.
However, I've gotten the vibe that it's overall a better OS than Windows 7. That it's basically the same, with a few performance enhancing features (such as faster bootup and a better usage of SSDs).
I'm thinking if I already had 7, I'd just stick with it, but since I'm starting fresh, I don't see why not to go with the latest build. They just announced today that what was rumored to be the next version will actually just be an 8.1 Service Pack offered for free to anyone on Windows 8.
Supposedly, amongst other things, it will fix the #1 complaint, which is that they took away the Start Button and replaced it with the "Start Screen", which is the flashy interface. However, I've seen where you can download 3rd party software now to correct that problem (
http://www.areaguard.com/startw8).
Seems like if I'm starting from scratch, I might as well go for 8, get the 8.1 upgrade, and not have to worry about upgrading again until I really need to.
Now, speaking of this...anyone have an MSDN license?