First thing you should know about Windows 8 is that it does not work well with machines that aren’t designed for it. Basically any machine that shipped with Windows 7 should stay with 7. I shouldn’t be surprised. This is how Microsoft works. It’s been this way since 95. If you buy a PC with a particular version of Windows that’s the best experience you can expect from that machine.
I’m almost done recovering my ASUS Eee PC from a mistaken install of 8. Stupid me, I wanted to try 8 and my ASUS was less than a year old, so what the heck right? WRONG! Windows 8 installed fine and simple things worked like browsing the web and editing office documents. None of my function keys worked, my graphics hardware didn’t function, and games (the only real reason I run Windows) failed miserably.
To be fair, this is more ASUS’es issue than Microsoft. ASUS isn’t going to write 8 drivers for older laptops. I should have expected this, I should have known better. I learned my lesson, hopefully for the last time. If I want to try a new Microsoft product I have to wait until I can buy something with it pre-loaded.
Upgrading to try something from Microsoft leads to failure and then a previous version of Windows re-install.