I've got a desktop with 7 Ultimate, and 2 laptops with 7 Home Premium, and I certainly wouldn't spend the money to move up to Windows 8, at least not right now when money is tight.
That said, the one laptop might actually benefit from Windows 8 at some point....the AMD E-450 CPU is pretty slow compared to my other computers, and if Win 8.1 runs so well on tablets with even less powerful chips, then it might speed that laptop up.
SteamOS may be quite a big breakthrough,. It is not just for running steam games. Nvidia and Amd are all for it. It is open source. Wouldn't be surprised to see that do well.
Whether Gartner is right or wrong we'll see in a few years. But their statement that the desktop is "on life support" is my impression too and that is worrysome. For people that do not operate in a touch environment the new UI is cumbersome and will be difficult to accept.
I did stock up on Windows 7 and Office 2010 licenses and should be safe for a few years. I will, however, watch the Windows 8 developments closely with the one and only Windows 8 license that I run under VMware Player. That setup allows me to use it on all my systems (even from an external SSD) which is convenient for me because I am living in 3 locations.
Not sure all these people realize that most professionals need desktops (CAD, accounting etc.). the trend at professional workplaces is to have 2 (or even 4) monitors and also to get 30"+ monitors. there is no use for touch (unless you want to pretent to be in "Minority report"). So I hope a desktop OS will appear at some point.
MS really screws business costumers. Which IT department wants to update every year? Most skip one OS (with 3 year cycle that means 6 years). Businesses have to train IT staff, train users, validate drivers for thousands of devices, .... this all costs 20 times more than the OS license. There is no way these 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 updates will be welcome.
I hope in 2015 MS comes out with W9 and hope W9 is usable in 9.0 version, not requiring annual updates. so long I stick with W7.
I think Linux in general is about to take off in a big way. One of the big things that stopped people (including me) from moving was usability, and gaming.
You've got distros like Mint and Ubuntu working their a**es off trying to make it usable for "normal people", they aren't there yet, but it's getting there. Yes the advanced stuff is a bit of a headache, but hey isn't it on Windows?
With steam on board for linux now, and many indie games (which at the moment is all that is really interesting me.) also porting to Linux, I think that it might just pull itself out of the gutter.
Of course people have been saying that Linuxes rise is nigh for donkeys years, so what do I know?
I find Mint (I use Mint Mate) just as easy to use as Windows - in some aspects even easier. Here are some Mint Mate tutorials I made for those who like to venture into that. Just download this PDF file which gives you the links to 9 tutorials.
PS: I highly recommend to install Mint (or any other Linux) in a virtual partition with VMware Player. That makes life a lot easier, runs just as well as native and you can run it side by side with your host system. One of the linked tutorials describes the procedure.
My thought is that many companies will stick with Windows 7, but some will adopt Windows 8 with one of the Start Button/Start Menu add-ins, such as the one I use, StartIsBack.
For those who go with Windows 8 and an add-in, a lot of them will go with local, rather than Microsoft, user accounts.
I would go with Windows 8 and one of the add-ins, so that I can keep getting Windows patches and updates.
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