Go for Windows 8. It's awesome. Not saying 7 is bad, 7 is a great OS for office works. But for a home computer, even without a touch screen, Windows 8 makes more sense. The live tile concept is super cool. But before you do, i'd suggest try out Windows 8 in vmware player, u can borrow a friend's dvd and install it as a trial version on your current computer in vmware player, just to make sure the metro concept doesn't p you off, i know people who hate Windows 8 like they hate osama bin laden, if you are one of them, Windows 8 would be a real bad investment. (DO NOT TRY TO ACTIVATE IT, THAT'D B ILLEGAL. Just let it say "windows is not activated", you can still try it for a day, even without activation)