I have been windows free for a few years now, but things are changing. My Old Dell Laptop died just before Mother's day, and it ended up being a motherboard failure. I ended up going out and buying a new Laptop. (Asus Q500A) which came with Windows 8. My plan was to install Ubuntu 13.10 on it, but ended up going in a different direction. I found a Dell on ebay that was the same model. (Insprion 1521). I installed my 4 gig of RAM and SSD into it and install Ubuntu 12.04 on it.
To be honest with you I like them both. I have to say I am still a Linux guy, but I have to say MS did come up with a nice OS this time. I guess I have to say that because the OS really plays well with the hardware. (touch screen, etc). I played around with 13.10 on the live OS USB drive and it worked with the touch screen, but in some areas not so. (File Manager for one).
The bottom line is again I am not Windows free again. There is a thread out here, What can windows do that Linux can't, and I am finding I like the way Windows 8 does things. I am not putting Ubuntu down, I think there are things about Ubuntu I like that Windows does not do. So I have to say I have the best of both worlds.