In the main, Microsoft has produced three turkeys - Win 95, ME and Vista. Of these, imo, Vista was by far the worst so I was very surprised to see the revamped Vista - Win 7 - be so good. If Win 8 has a lot of noticeable improvements I may buy it but I have a feeling I'll stick with Win 7 for now cos I like it. I certainly wouldn't buy Win 8 for the touch screen facility.
Word has it Win 8 will emulate Android and OSX which, if true, will be another reason I won't buy it, I prefer Windows-based OS's to App-based OS's.
As for Linux Mr Feckit, good idea, popular distros have come on in leaps and bounds but be aware they still can't do everything Windows software can do and some hardware still not recognised. But, those two things are in the minority, by and large most things can be done in Linux that can be done in Windows and most current hardware is recognised.
One worrying aspect is seeing how the latest version of Ubuntu is apps-based, seems this drove away a lot of Linux users to try different distros. I'm currently using Mint 12 which has a rather good KDE desktop, can recommend this one, especially if you're a Linux novice like me.