I'm nervous about 8. I can't imagine there won't be a user-facing option to disable the start screen and other metro stuff, but I'm still afraid there won't be 
Office... shrug. I don't use it enough to care much about the changes from version to version... someone else will have to comment on that.
Yes, the start screen and metro UI are horrific. Not for everyday OS, mobile maybe.
We got to play around with the developer version a few months ago.
