laptop heating, fan loud, battery life short in windows 7

dalhoomist,
Welcome to SF. Have you ever opened the bottom up to change ram or your HDD? I would open it up and see how much that exposes the guts and especially the fan which I would take a very close look at and then clean it with air and a damp q-tip. Air flow is critical and these fans get dirty and even clumps of dust can break off and slow if not block the flow of air.

dalhoomist,
If you are reluctant to open the back up which is really easy and unless there are stickers warning you of voiding warranties.....won't, I mean how else can you get to ram modules, wireless cards and your hard drive not to mention the all important little squirrel fan. If you want then find the air intake and the air exhaust and this is what you'll do. Get the best vacuum out and hold it or better yet temporarily tape it to the exhaust, then take compressed air and while the laptop is running do short full blasts of air into the intake. Do this several times while watching temps and then leave the vacuum on for a minute or two to hopefully pull away any dislodged dust. Then when done never use the laptop on your lap, bed, carpet and only with its legs raised it so provided or with a laptop cooler. Hope this helps.
Just found this video in Spanish but around 3:00 minutes it's opened up and all is shown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVBabE89_cE

OK so I'm thinking this ultrabook is just too new to be dusty or dirty inside. Looking at this compact wonder it could just be a hot running machine and maybe the only course is a raised cooler to provide better airflow. In any case you have a video which will help you see the ease of opening when you need or want to get inside it.
Hopefully someone will address the Windows 8 partial load, as I'm not sure if there are artifacts left over that are confusing Windows 7 but it will be worth looking into that. Have you considered a restore back to date before you tried to install Windows 8? From what I've seen and heard Windows * isn't worth it and I would avoid it and just use Windows 7. If push comes to shove then get you data off the drive and just do a clean install of Windows 7 and that way you can only load what you want and not all the bloatware that normally come pre-installed. Please see SF's excellent tutorials section for advice and step by step instructions....good luck.
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7[3]=Installation%20and%20Setup

Windows 8 much like a clean install of Windows 7 can fix a lot of computer issues but......Windows 8 has been panned as mostly a mobile touch screen OS with little if not a backwards step from Windows 7 as far as core function and features. If I were you I would try a clean install. I would also see if the small 20gb SSD is of a 2.5 form factor and I would change that out to a 128gb of larger and grow the use of this amazing feature to include programs, software and some games.