[Windows 8 General] GoodDayToDie:
Thanks for enlightening us on the new screw-ups and mishaps of Win8 upgrades. The availability of the downgrade restore point is a new and welcome change, but the rest sounds about right for an upgrade.

Four hours to upgrade (when a clean install takes 15 minutes): check

Permissions messed up afterward: check

Performace actually decreased (even though a clean install of Win8 performs better than a clean install of Win7 on the same hardware): check

Data loss (your Documents folder): check

As for your points re: Win8 itself: first of all, if your only experience with it is based on that abomination of an in-place upgraded system, assume everything you "know" about the OS from that experience is wrong. I've been running Win8 for ~1.5 years now (counting betas) and have never had the problem with indexing service (which runs low-priority and doesn't take system resources that you're trying to use for anything else), data loss from library or folder movement, or any of the other problems you mention. I did try an upgrade install during the betas, but the result was trash - a bunch of features didn't work afterward, and the performance was worse than it should be - and the response when I reported the issues was "do a clean install". Upgrade installs are only *technically* supported; even MS thinks they're a bad idea.

Judging on OS based on an upgrade install is like judging a car model based on taking that car's interior and body, but replacing the engine, transmission, suspension, electronics, wheels, brakes, lights, and wipers with random junk you pulled out of a wrecking yard (without checking the original model) and beat into shape with a hammer and a hacksaw. Sure, it *looks* like it's easier (cheaper than making the needed money to buy the actual model) than buying a new car, and if you're really careful and moderately lucky, it will actually run pretty well and not strand you in the middle of nowhere or burst into flame or something awkward like that. It's going to be a complete pain in the ass to maintain though, you'll end up having spent a ton of time hacking it together in the first place and then keeping it running until you quickly pass the point where it would have been easier to just get the new car, and in the meantime it will never perform as well as it "should" have. Putting a bunch of junk car parts in a BMW body does not mean you're driving a BMW.

By the way, those problems that I didn't have? That even includes the "switching back and forth" thing, because I found it was a lot better to just not use Metro at all. I treat the Start screen the same way I treat the Start menu on older NT6.x versions: an irrelevant graphical thing that pops up for the half second where I type the name of a program I want, in between when I hit the Windows key and when I hit Enter. I pinned my most-used apps to the taskbar. My typical admin stuff is on the Win+X (or right-click the Start button - yes, there is one, it's just hidden until you hover over it) menu. Outlook is a better mail client than Mail, and better scheduling tool than Calendar. Pidgin is better than Messenger. If for some reason I want to log into Facebook, I have this thing called a "web browser" (which runs in a window, with all its features instead of a crippled subset of them, thank you very much).

Metro Skype is good enough I do use it sometimes, although I snap it to one edge of my (very wide) screen so it doesn't get in the way; I've considered going back to desktop Skype anyhow. Desktop SkyDrive is much better than the Metro one. Same for desktop OneNote vs. the Metro version. The only Metro apps I actually use much are games, and frankly I don't use Metro games that often on my main (desktop) Win8 box; why would I, when I could play Eve Online or Civilization / Alpha Centauri instead?