OK, so I tried to force myself into liking Win8. While it's not the evil scourge from hell, It's simply annoying to use. It's not any specific big thing, but a whole myriad of tiny annoyances. They add up after a while.
Admittedly, Win 8 takes some getting used to, but it's not something you can do in a day or three. It does take time, two or three weeks, perhaps, but once you've got it set up to your liking it's a slick and very efficient OS.
I reverted back to Vista64 and my media stuff, Acronis and CAD all work again. It's easier to shut programs off when I'm done with them and I can easily restart or shut my computer off when I want to.
I had issues with Acronis 2012 not running in Win 8, but I got a $19.99 upgrade to 2013 and all was well again. Other than that, all my other programs and utilities work under 8 without issue. As for launching, closing programs, rebooting, shutting down the PC, Win 8 is decidedly more speedy and efficient than any Windows edition before it. Now that I've stopped/delayed some programs an services at start up, I'm booting from a cold start to a usable desktop in 19 - 20 seconds, and shutdown occurs in under 10 seconds... and you can't ask for better than that.
There's a patch for Windows 8 ......
....it's called 'Windows 7'
That's easy to say when the closest to Win you've been is when you drove past Hardly Normal and they had it on display just inside the front door.
And I reckon that 'hardly normal' customers who shop there should get a free psychiatric consultation with every purchase. 
