Questions Concerning Upgrade to Win 8

Oh, forgot to include some info.  System is i7-2600, 8gb ram.

Thanks for the info, guys.  Sure appreciate it.

Bill:  I'm not really concerned about the boot time but with just about every applications I try to open.  Somewhere between 7-10 seconds from the time I double click to the time the app shows up.  Then another 3-5 before it is usable.  I have an XP machine running 32bit that is a lot more faster than this Win 7.

I was just wondering if Win 8 can speed things up here.  What's making me hesitate a little is being able to go back to win 7 or not.  MS makes it so confusing sometimes.

cheers