Can't believe you stayed with Vista so long!
Though I'm a bit like you. I was using Win98SE well into the XP era, and couldn't have cared less.
I only changed from XP to 7 last year when I decided I wanted to put those fancy DX10/11 features to the test, and I was pleasantly surprised! (with Win 7 I mean). In fact I'm so pleased I kinda regret having installed it as a dual boot (at the moment it seemed smart: I would keep trusty XP and only boot 7 for the fancy games that had DX10/11), but now I have XP taking up space and its in the boot disk, Win7 is like the "second" OS. It may also be a reason that the prices are a little prohibitively expensive here.

Anyway, I ain't touching that ugly Win 8 thing no matter how cheap they may be offering it!

Congratulations, ET3D! You're officially worse than me. :P

With Windows 7 having extended support until 2020, I'm ok holding on to it until I see what Windows 9, and possibly 10, have to offer.

Oh, I'm sure I'll eventually get around to getting Win 8... when I buy my next lappie. ;) By that time Win 9 may be around the corner. Heh.

I liked the new task manager and the inclusion of MSE as Windows Defender. Metro is hit or miss, depending on the task at hand. I really don't like that it doesn't have the equivalent of a Start menu, though, as opposed to that "second desktop" that is Metro.

I got Win8 from the $15 offer since I bought a new laptop and installed it on my dead laptop's hard drive. I tried it for a bit and I was starting to get used to it, but HP Coolsense doesn't have a Win8 version which seemed like a minus - also wanted to get back to gaming. I should still probably go back to using 8 since it improves performance for APUs.

It's not like an OS has that many gaming hours in it. I have Baldur's Gate 2 Complete on my backlog, and that would take me a lot more time to complete than Windows 8. :)
Vista and Windows 7 aren't very different. Vista does use more RAM, but I have 8GB which is enough for running it decently.

Is there a link to somewhere on the Microsoft site about this issue?.

I don't know, but I used this statement made by a MS employer as a semi-official statement:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/W8ITProPreRel/thread/1be71590-1f43-4525-a341-26bdbccdb9df Note: he isn't actually suggesting disabling the "fast restart" from the power button options, but he is suggesting that instead of shutting down, you restart your PC (which by-passes the fast restart ie. partial hibernation, even if it is enabled). Pretty silly suggestion if you ask me since when I want to shutdown a machine, I want to shut it down, not restart. But in practise it also works as it also by-passes the thing that can cause problems in this particular situation.

That suggestion was for Win8 preview version (check the date), but at least for me the problem still exists in released Win8 Pro.

My main dislike at the moment with "Metro" is that it feels silly the system jumps from the windowed desktop mode to the full-screen UI whenever I want to view e.g. a png or pdf file, or that when I press the "internet"-button on my keyboard while I'm in desktop mode, it still launches the stupid WinRT version of Internet Explorer, not the desktop IE.

But I presume that can be fixed by installing desktop replacements for all those WinRT apps, and tell Win8 to use them by default instead of the full-screen WinRT apps.

An alternate solution for this issue is to make the Windows 7 boot loader the default. This way Windows 7 can only ever be reached with Windows 8 in a shut down state, which can be reached from within Windows 8 by either restarting or using advanced startup to change to it. You can accomplish this by either installing Windows 7 after Windows 8 or using the Windows 7 install/repair disc to replace the boot loader. Windows 8's boot loader still exists when accessed from within Windows 8 so no functionality is lost by doing this.

This is the way my system is set up so I have never had this issue. As an added bonus you won't have a boot loader prompt delaying the startup process when using Windows 8 normally, making it perfect for having Windows 7 as an occasional boot option.

The desktop viewers are still included and can be set by searching for Default Programs on the Start Screen. PDF files still have no bundled desktop viewer so you'll need your own solution for that.

If rumours are true thats about a year from now... the windows"blue" leak seems to suggest it at least

The current theory is that Blue is a free feature update for Windows 8, similar to Windows Phone 7's Mango/Tango/etc., rather than actually being Windows 9. That would mean that Microsoft could stick to their three-year schedule while keeping the current version up to date with new technologies (which are normally only supported natively in the next major version).

I've upgraded from 7 to 8 with the $15 windows upgrade offer. I don't feel the need to dual boot
with 7 since almost everything runs on 8 except for a few games in Gog's catalog.

If you don't like Metro UI and want to bypass or ignore it, then you can install Classic Shell like
I did to restore the start button and disable active corners. Windows 8 is essentially 7 with
improved task manager, memory usage, bootup/shut down times, security, and more.
Unfortunately because of their decision to force everyone to use Metro without an option for
windows 7 classic interface, Windows 8 will probably be the best and most underrated windows
ever released.