I also have a windows surface tablet along with windows 8 on my pc, it's nice because they communicate so well with each other through cloud and network. Also since I'm on one or the other all the time, I've become quite a wiz at working windows 8...they function just about identically. I enjoy it so far.
I loved it so much on my desktop (must say it is awesome on multi-monitors) I ended up buying it for my laptop.
I see the metro start screen as the start button, I mean really it acts just like it except bigger. I haven't found one useful thing I couldn't stick on that screen.
Actually take your mouse go to the Right Top of screen. A new little bar will show up. Go down to Settings and BAM there's Power.
Went looking how much an upgrade would cost, normally around 50-60 euro. But it seems microsoft is holding a deal, till 31st of January it is only 30 euro.... Hmm, might actually consider it. It is the pro version.
I have Windows 8 on a SSD at home and you're right, it's not that much faster doing anything than Windows 7, at least on an SSD. I have it on a HDD at work and it does actually seem to do things faster than Windows 7. It seems that with an SSD it doesn't matter which OS, things work as fast as they are going to.
TBH, I rarely use the tiles in the Win 8 interface, but it does give a good aethetic look to the desktop. I have Win 8 and I like it. No issues and my OS seems pretty peppy since the install. One of my fav additions to it, as you mentioned, is the compatibility with multi monitor setups. The extended taskbar and panoramic screens is pretty nice.
I don't use it because I'm a Chrome fan, however IE10 isn't so bad either. It's very quick on Win 8 and is a good option for those who like to stick with the MS browser.
To take that a step further, while on the desktop, just hit alt+F4.
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To add my .02 about the OS though, I have been using it on all of my computers for several months now and I will not be going back. I love the responsiveness of W8 compared to W7/XP, and the GUI is aesthetically pleasing. Having said that, I rarely, if ever, use the start screen. I removed almost all tiles on it entirely. If I need to run something, I do as I have always done with W7: Press the windows key and type the first few letters of a program I want and hit enter. I have not really had many compatibility issues, and have yet to have one that is not resolved by compatibility mode running as XP/SP3 or W7.
Boot times are much improved, updates are much improved, security seems to be much better. I have chosen to run sans AV and see how long it takes to get infected. I do manually check fairly often in my files while clearing temp locations and have yet to find any malware. The security is quite good compared to past iterations of Windows, and is even better than OSX from what I can tell so far.