Hey guys,
I tried Windows 8 in it's early Beta stages and absolutely hated it.
I have it on my new laptop now and while I do seem to be hitting bug after bug it's actually not that bad.
I think like Vista there are quite a few driver and compatibility issues but if you can iron them out it's actually a solid operating system, performance in things like Visual Studio and Photoshop is better than Win7.
In terms of the programs and the start menu I found it annoying at first but now I get to them in the exact same way I did in Win7 hit start menu type "Excel" hit enter.
Only once in every 100 times opening a program did I ever browse to Start / All Programs / Microsoft Office 2010 / Excel and open it there.
It's so much faster to hit start type it and go!
Then for the really used programs pop em on your quick launch bar, sorted!