Whit all respect, where do you see Windows 8 booting faster than any Linux distribution?

It's faster than Windows 7, yes... but only because it doesn't load all the services that Windows 7 starts at boot time. Check the clock next time you'll boot Windows 8!

I also use few Linux distributions on a daily basis (Debian Squeeze and Wheezy, Ubuntu 10.04.4, 12.04.1 and 12.10, MintOS 14.1, OpenSUZE 12.1, FreeBSD9.1, CentOS 6.3 and even Fedora 17) on the same machine where I run Windows 7 and 8 (all the OS are 64 bit and are installed on larges Crucial SSD).

And any Linux distribution boots always two to three times faster than Windows 8! Oops!

BTW, most if not all the Linux distributions handle updates and system updates automatically and relaibly too. But you've to learn how to setup those very basic things! LoL!

Now with regard to the web services, just compare Nginx or Cherokee or Lighttpd and even the old dog Apache on any Linux distribution to the pure crap named IIS. MSFT's web server isn't even a joke, it's a shame!

Just my two cents.
All the best.