Joe

Reception for Win8 on the initial day of release has been sort of lukewarm. A report from the "Business News" may have some comments of interest:

Microsoft pins high hopes on radical shift with Windows 8

A fairly brief report of some of the "learning curve problems" to expect might be in:

Where do I click again? A Windows 8 guide (Fairly brief, but probably helpful?)

The most complete description of what you'll find in Win8 is a little "dated" (September 2012) but offers quite a bit of detail:

Microsoft Windows 8 review

This last one is multiple pages, but if you're strong enough to tough out going through it all it appears to give a pretty thorough description, although there may have been some minor changes at the last minute for the released versions.

Note that with Vista and later versions, Microsoft has bragged about features as if they're in all versions of each new OS, leaving it to the users to find out that what was described is only there in the top-priced versions and that they need an upgrade. Win8 simplifies that some, with only two different versions, but I have seen some similar vagueness. If you're interested in particular features, you need to be careful about making sure that the ones you expect are in the version you get.

Some sellers appear to advertise the separate "RT" OS as being the same thing as Windows 8. IT IS NOT THE SAME. You probably will only see the RT on tablets or notebooks, etc., but some people apparently have been fooled.

The implied requirement to have a "touch screen monitor" in order to use the most flamingly advertised features of Win8 seems to be ignored, and although Microsoft brags about how "all your old programs" will run on Win8 (I don't really believe them on this, but I've got some really old stuff on Win7) and they have lots of help with whether your computer is compatible for upgrading, I have yet to see a clear spec (or statement) about what monitor requirements could trip you up. There could be no problem but nobody says that.

Happy confusion. Let us know how you're getting on with it.

John