After running for more than half a year Windows 8 RC (at start i didn`t really liked it, and i talk from experience not random trashtalk win8 hate frenzy that is on the net from people who never installed Win8) the free license finally expired so i was forced to get back to Win7.
All i can say the Start in Win8 is better! than the one in Win7, i got used to have my very important applications on taskbar the least important in the start screen, on Win7 i was forced to go into Start> All programs scroll down to my desired application folder click again then access it , on Win8 it`s all there right in front of your big 1080p screen 1 click away (i don`t like destkop full of icons, if you`ll comment to just put them there).
Thought at first the little button that changes between Detail List and Thumbnails in the lower right corner of the Explorer window didn`t looked to be very usefull, when i got back to windows 7 i really felt the missing buttons there when i started to browse folders and needed the fast switch between them.
Windows responsiveness feel, no benchmark that only shows you numbers will ever tell you this, when actually working with your PC in Win8 it feels faster than 7, everything is a bit snappier.
Gaming, though in Counter Strike: GO , the max frame rate was about the same, the gaming experience was crap on Win7, on almost all of the maps i experienced massive frame rate fluctuations when the maps were getting crowded with smoke , bombs and kind of effects, i actually had to lower down my video settings to get better frame rates but still useless, and sometimes having split-seconds freezes like my pc was loading something from hard drives.
Installed Win8 again , everything got back to normal in CS:GO.
System used: AMD Phenom II 940 , 8 GB DDR2 , GTX 465 1 GB , Corsair SSD 120 GB system drive , 2x Seagate 1TB 7200 RPM storage drives.
Say what you want about the look of Win8 but for my particular case Win8 is an upgrade from Win7, i also work with Adobe Premiere CS6 / Photoshop CS6 but didn`t got to retest them to see the feel differences.