Man, I m no it manager, consultant or systems engineer, I m just a person being forced to use ms products for years, yes I would love to switch to Linux mint or a Ubuntu based os like xubuntu or lubuntu but there is something which prevents me, availability of the drivers(utilities) and programs I love, yes Ubuntu serves thousands of free software but nothing like cleaner, cheat engine, avg(firewall) etc. and of course games, yes Ubuntu serves many free games to download and play but most of them r like tetris and the ones which r 3d r not even quality enough as cs 1.5 yet. all we need is to wait for Linux to get more worldwide so independent program producers like iobit etc. start producing programs also available to install and use on Linux systems which might also require all Linux producers to unite in 1 single release, there r uncountable amounts of file extensions (tar, gz etc.) of Linux systems which make it hard for producers like iobit to make installation packages for Linux, never even try Wine (a program(emulator) which emulates exe files to run on Linux) it is complete bullshit.
3 years ago, when I gave a try to w7, I formatted it to xp sp3 back in the same day, there were great issues especially in compatibility(run in compatibility mode sux which I figured that day) and my favourite programs and most games did not work. 3 months ago, I upgraded my ram to 8 gb and figured that I need an x64 system to make use of all my ram which forced me to use w7 x64 as I saw how xp sp2 x64 (windows server 2003 indeed) sux too. 3 months ago, I also noticed that they finally managed to make the w7 usable after 3 years. so I believe windows 8 needs at least 2 or 3 years too to be able to be usable as I hear people complaining about not being able to find drivers(utilities), not being able to run some games and programs. a w7 sp2 would be good as I also believe that it servers hotfixes we cannot normally get via normal update. I guess only option is to be patient till our favourite programs and games r produced for Linux too.