Totally agree with chris2kari
I also use Ubuntu since at least 5 years. I even converted my wife from windows to Ubuntu. She is now running Ubuntu on her netbook since a couple of years. But to be honest, switching to unity interface was an awful shock to her. I also had some bumps on the road while getting used to unity (it packs a lot of cool and highly usable features, but still feeling so unnatural in some situations). Then, after buying a new laptop and installing 12.04 I began to have too much instability in Ubuntu. System errors came up regularly out of the blue, so I tweaked, and even I re-installed it. Now it feels more stable, but I began to test other distros using VirtualBox. And Linux Mint (my preference is Cinnamon) was a refreshing and fantastic experience. Everything just works. On the same VirtualBox configuration Linux Mint boots faster and runs stable while a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 is slower and sometimes has issues. So I'm on the brink of leaving Ubuntu for Mint.
I never tried Windows 8, but I'll give a shot, since the geek inside me is curious.
