I highly recommend the book "Who Moved My Cheese?"
by Spencer Johnson.
It's the story of four characters living in a maze who face unexpected change when they discover that their cheese is no longer located where it has always been.
I can't help but think about the book when I read these posts.
The simple fact is change has occurred to the operating system and IT folks have to deal with it. There's really no point trying to bring the cheese back (as described in this article and others). It won't be there for you or your staff in an out of the box deployment so you can do a few things about it.
1. Stick with Windows 7. It will remain supported until 2020. You should be planning to replace Windows XP before 4/8/14.
2. Switch operating systems. Linux? OSX? Chrome? There is a learning curve to them as well.
3. Embrace the change or at least get used to it. Your users will be using Win 8 at home. Small businesses will end up with it.
Regardless of which option you choose, you and your users will end up learning something new.
You can't expect the cheese to magically return and you can't expect your IT job to remain the same forever.
Pro 
