Wow! That's a first for me. I've never heard of anyone making Win 7 look like Win 8 before.
Really? From all the Google searching I've done trying to find all the things I need, I can tell it's quite common. There are many applications and programs that can change your UI to look like W8 and many ways to tweak your system to imitate the looks of W8. I personally really like the look of my W7 now.
The most common approach many will opt for is trying to make 8 look like 7 with the use of 3rd party apps like Classic Shell, Start8, Start Menu 7, etc. due to not liking the Metro gui to begin with. Some pin their programs folder to the main taskbar as an alternative approach to getting past the changes MS made which favors the tablet by design.
As for deciding on whether or not to go with 8, 8.1 the Preview could have been installed on a VM for a fast look without effecting your present situation any. Have a spare drive or partition and simply creating a full image backup of 7 ahead of time can save a world of hurt if you are not able to reinstall the previous after finding you don't like 8. These are options people tend to forget about often and then panic when dumping 7 for 8 and then wanting to go backwards.
The Pros and Cons I found with 8 excluding Metro or "Modern" gui are for the Plus factor MS finally put in a working system protection namely a working Security Essentials and trimmed the fat as far as a speedier OS. But that also is where the Cons come in when MS stripped away the usual "desktop" features like the Media Center, dvd playback support(video codecs, etc.), and a few other things like no user setup options! to suit the needs of the tablet.
To come down to the basics if you want a desktop OS stay with 7. If you are fine with tablet touch&swipe then 8! If you want the usual and quite often expected to find features 7. For just a faster boot and not much else but an improved MS SE under another name(Windows Defender) once again then you would go with 8.
Here I run a desktop and want a desktop OS that works. 7 is the winning formula! For the next they may only see "new" and don't pay much attention to the differences. And as for driver updates it can be a real pain at times like finding the drivers for the main board here with the same make and model used on two different 7 builds! A lot of the stuff on the software cd was still 32bit while the old build now seeing 7 again that was passed along was just worked on and not one hardware update beside ATI and the Realtek Gigabyte family controller driver for the nic was listed in the 131 MS optional and important updates with a fresh install of 7 just performed!
The usb WiFi adapter used for just the install, activation, and updates refused to work at first until getting the usb controller drivers to go on(USB 3.0 part of that) and then the adapter ware which was disabled later in case of future need while being hardwired by nic card. I didn't have a 14ft ethernet cable onhand to run to the router directly when getting that up and running again.
The first big tip when planning a clean install however is going to the support site for each hardware ahead of time to download and save what will be needed in preparation. Once up and running and checking the updates you will then only need to worry about the Windows updates and none other since the latest for each item was already installed! The same for the onboard audio chip if you have a separate card installed. You toss the onboard drivers on but disable the onboard either in the bios or DM to avoid conflict with the expansion card.
This also applies to 8 as well as previous especially when drivers were late for Vista! Try waiting a full year to dump XP off of a second drive since the older was needed just for one hardware back then! The manufacturers can be ssssslooooo eeerrrrrrr then mooo llaaaas sses at times! MS Stressed OEMs to have support ready for 7! But once again there wasn't hardly anything ready for 8 when first launched.
lol
