MeshHave you run into any functional issues with general use in Win 8?
 

When researching this myself, I honestly didn't find a plethora of Win 8 horror stories or anything like that as previous SW upgrades sometimes had.
 
A lot of people did have driver concerns, as there are a lot of cases where "official" Win 8 drivers haven't been released. But as I said earlier, that doesn't mean Win 7 or Vista drivers won't work perfectly fine, just that they aren't officially supported in Win 8. Some SW does have some problems with Win 8 and still needs to be updated (like DPC Latency Checker), but outside of a few ancient programs I have that I could still get working in Vista but not in Win 8 (don't know about 7), most stuff seems to work without issues.
 
But since I wanted Remote Desktop anyway, in my case I sort of hedged my bets by getting Win 8 Pro, which as I mentioned earlier also allows you to downgrade to Win 7 (if you have the 7 installation media). But if you install Classic Shell and aren't too attached to the classic versions of Solitaire and Minesweeper, I really doubt you'd want to as it's pretty much the same.

Okay, for my two penn'orth,
 
I installed Win 8 Pro about a month ago on my desktop PC.  I have no touch screen.  The start screen took a bit of getting used to but once I 'modified' it to my liking (grouping tiles into 'sets' of similar apps, resizing the tiles, making sure the tiles I use most are on the main part of the start screen) it all started to fall into place.  I have a tile for X2 that requires one click to launch and no 'double clicking' required for any app on the start screen.  The traditional desktop screen is still there, you just have to switch to it, and the installation of Classic Shell gives almost identical functionality of the original start button.
 
Now as for performance!  Compatibility is excellent -  all the programs that worked under W7 work faultlessly under W8.  W8 drivers for most of my hardware is available and installed and for those that don't have W8 drivers (an old casio Keyboard) work fine with the W7 drivers.  X2 performs exceedingly well with no glitches, freezes, pops etc., and latency is very low.  All my VST's work fine too.
 
Overall the OS seems 'snappier' - it may be my imagination but programs seem to load quicker, windows open quicker, dialog boxes open and close quicker etc.  I get the impression that under the hood W7 has been 'tweaked' to get better performance and the W8 interface sits neatly over the top.
 
One issue to be aware of - you CAN install W8 pro without needing an account or password (no-one else has access to my machine)  BUT if you use your desktop PC as a normal PC for the internet, emails etc., and you LINK your social website accounts using a Hotmail, Outlook or other e-mail address to make use of the live tile updating of Facebook, Twitter etc., FROM THAT POINT ON YOU WILL HAVE TO SIGN INTO W8 WITH YOUR ACCOUNT NAME AND PASSWORD!!  There is no going back from this.  You cannot then create an account that DOESN'T have a password. Personally this is my biggest gripe and is the reason I went back to W7 temporarily before re-installing W8 and learning my lesson.  I HATE WITH A VENGEANCE having to 'Log In' to my own computer - I know all about security BUT there are thousands of people who don't have kids or have other people who may have access to or use their computers, so in my view this is totally unnecessary.  It's like having an overriding 'User Account Control' that you can't tun off!
 
Save for this annoyance I have found W8 a pleasure to use, even without a touch screen.  99% of my existing programs are compatible and seem to work just as well if not better under the new OS.  I am not too fussed about having a touch screen, but when they become affordable I will give one a try.  Hopefully, if I don't like the 'touch' part I will be able to turn that off!!