How do i try Windows 8 with out being married to it?

I am running windows 7 on a decent laptop with a 500 gig hard drive. i also run ubuntu on a laptop with a 150 gb solid state hard drive that i use as a dlna that stores all my media files to play to my home network via ssh. (i know that sounds backwords but there is a reason) I would like to try windows 8 without getting stuck with it givin the fact that i dont have a touch screen. i recently changed to a W8 phone and am very impressed, granted i had an iphone for two years so it wasnt going to take much to impress coming off that useless thing. i would prefer not to run it off a vm. thank you

true but i was afraid that i wouldn't get an accurate impression running in a vm due to the limited resources allocated to it. i assume it has steeper hardware requirements than the prior windows. does microsoft offer a trial iso that i can download or do i have to just get it the... other way.