I hear ya Fred.
I ran Windows 8 in virtual machine to try it out for a while which immediately overcame my usual desire to upgrade to the "latest thing." Without a touch screen, I didn't find a single new feature that made it worth the trouble. Maybe on a tablet but I'm happy enough with Android.
On another front, ever since I've taken the time to set up my home office PC to dual boot Win 7 and Ubuntu Linux, I found I almost never boot to windows anymore. Gaming is pretty much the only time I do it as once I loaded Wine to run in Linux's background, I can even run all of my windows apps (except some games) if I really have to (and I rarely have to.)
Libre Office, the free version of MS Office is so surprisingly feature filled compared to the real thing I don't even miss Office. It also works fine with and saves in Office format so there is no extra work with work files.
It's not a perfect OS for sure and there are some trade offs but nothing that sets me back. Also, I find I can't live without one of the add-ins now. Compiz 3-D Cube allows me to use 4 (or more) virtual screens at once. It's like having 4 monitors to flip back and forth to in a 3-d space on your screen. It's so much more intuitive to find things vs. Alt-Tabing through dozens of windows. It also works with my dual monitors giving me essentially 8 virtual monitors to play with.
You can go to 1:30 in the video below to see what I mean.
Other add ins plus Compiz 3-D Cube at 1:30 
