Dual boot Windows 7 & Windows 8 on Asus Sonic Master S550CM

I have a brand new (no data) Asus Sonic Master S550CM laptop with a 1TB hd and 6GB Ram. It came preinstalled with Windows 8. The laptop is going to be used by a senior and Windows 8 is just too complicated for her. Originally I was planning on getting rid of Windows 8 and installing Windows 7, but I'm starting to think a dual boot might be the better idea. I've spent several hours looking for info on drivers and whether it's feasible to dual boot but I'm not getting very satisfactory information. Asus.com doesn't seem to offer any information either. So, I'm posting my first thread to a forum - ever - if I've posted this in the wrong area my apologies.

The hd has two partitions: OS (C) 372.6GB and Data (D) 537.6GB. I'm thinking that I should shrink (C) to 186GB and rename it (E)? and install Windows 7 on (E) leaving Data (D) to be accessed from both Windows 7 and Windows 8?

I have just enough tech skill to get myself in trouble on these complicated projects. I have dual booted computers before (Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP) but not a laptop.

My questions are:
Has anyone successfully done this?
Are there other "things" I should do (ie I read that I should turn off fast start-up)?
I also read I should disable secure boot in the bios, but the bios won't let me select secure boot to disable it.
Which Windows 7 should I install, the current O/S is Windows 8 64-bit?
Will the touch screen still function in Windows 7?
Can I make Windows 7 the "default" boot so she won't have to actually select it?
When/If the time comes will I be able to easily take Windows 7 off?
What am I missing or not thinking of? Other suggestions?

Thanks for your help.

1) Downgrade to Windows 7.
Downgrade Windows 8 to Windows 7
Warning you must have the UEFI/BIOS firmware setting in Step Three set.

Make sure you read the NOTE at Step three.

2) If Using a USB Pen drive on a PC with a UEFI BIOS.
USB Pen drive need to be formatted to FAT32 as in
UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows
Take note of Step 11 for Windows 7.
Also you will need to use a USB 2.0 port, as there are no USB 3.0 drivers in Windows 7.

ok, I was finally able to get Windows 7 installed however it was an abysmal failure because I could not get any drivers. So, I went back to Windows 8 and installed the Classic Shell (wished I'd found out about that before starting this whole project, but, well, live and learn.) Anyway, I ended up taking the laptop to someone to have them format the harddrive to ntfs so I could load windows 7. Now I need to change it back to udf, any suggestions? I suppose I could take it back to ncix but I'm hoping to save the $40 for them to do it. Ultimately I need to increase the partition the o/s is installed on - I tried using Paragon (the free version) and Disk Management in Windows 8 but neither is helping because of the ntfs udf clash. Suggestions?

What do you mean you could not get any drivers? Are you aware that Win7 is a driver-complete OS in the installer and then when you get online to enable Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3) and run all rounds of Important and Optional Windows Updates?

There shouldn't be more than one or two drivers still missing after all Updates, which can be imported from the PC or Device's Support downloads webpage. In thousands of installs we've helped with here, I don't remember ever not being able to find a driver.

Put your network adapter driver in the backup so you can install it to get online and do the Updates if it isn't provided by installer. Plugging in by wire increases the chance it will start up ready to connect.

It is also not necessary to pay someone to format your HD because we help with these operations every day here and are the top resource anywhere for this.

What I would do is boot the Win7 installer now to Clean Install Windows 7 making sure you have disabled Secure Boot in BIOS setup. If you want to install to UEFI then you'll also need to follow the special steps for UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums - or you can Bypass UEFI to Install WIn7.

This time put your network adapter driver in the backup so you can install it to get online quickly to do all the Updates, then let us know which drivers are still missing and we will help you find them if necessary. There shouldn't be more than one or two.

ASUS VivoBook S550CM - Notebooks & Ultrabooks - ASUS

ASUS said:

Realtek Audio Driver
If you want to upgrade your OS from Win 7 to Win 8,to prevent software compatibility issue, please uninstall the older version driver before install the newer version driver

Therefore all drivers for Windows 7 x64 are on the Windows 7 sp1 x64 DVD.