What high cost of switching the OS? All my Windows 7 programs run in it. I even uninstalled my MS Office 2010 and installed my old copy of Office Pro 2003 and it worked perfectly! CCleaner/EaseUS Todo/Flash/Java/FoxIt Reader/Picasa all work fine in Windows 8 Consumers Preview. If you have Windows 7 and an external drive already, and you should for backups and images, you can image your current setup, do a clean install of the free Win 8 preview, and download EaseUS Todo and make their boot CD and image the Win 8 image and re-image whenever you add a new program or test and switch back and forth from there.

Tomorrow is Windows update day, and I will be updating Win 8, and then restoring my Win 7 image and update that across the board (Windows updates, MSE updates, and any program updates that are new) and then I will re-image the Win 7 image and restore the Win 8 to continue trying it out. So what is the expense here? If you are talking about having to pay at the end of the trial later this year you don't have to. You can just re-image 7 or Vista, or XP and go back to the way you are used to. Only after you know it can you even begin to assess the costs to a business, and then only your business, and then only if you are the IT for that one business. Otherwise it becomes an exercise in apples and oranges.