I haven't seen any issue so far.
The biggest difference really is the lack of a start menu, so if you are used to explore that menu with your mouse, you may get confused, but if you already use "Window key" and then type what you are looking for, you'll be fine.
I actually like the fact that you can split your screen and have let's say Maya on 9/10th of the screen and skype or your emails on the remaining part, keeps me from alt-tab'ing all the time.
Wait with 8.1. Games have problem with it. Last night I wanted to play Hitman Absolution and I get error "Entry point missing in some DLL". After Googling it turns out that many people report similar issues with many games after upgrading do 8.1 from 8.
As for programs, Zbrush, Fusion, Houdini, Photoshop, Modo, VisualStudio, xNormal works. That's all I tested.
As for experience. I like where Microsoft is going. W8 was rushed to market but 8.1 seems a lot more polished. Another 0.1 release and it will be really good windows version. I love splitting screen. Can be addictive , and once you go back to 7 you can miss it.
I have installed windows 8.1 the other week. Start button MS added isnt good enough really. However it is curable with "Classic Shell" app as Alphavader stated above.
Latest Cryengine 64 works fine here. So far no issues at all.
Yeah, 8 with Classic Shell. I liked Classic Shell enough that I installed it on my Windows 7 machines too. I prefer the Windows '98 style program menu.
I don't have any problems with Unity and Max/Maya.
I use Windows 8 Pro, updated to 8.1, 2 weeks after it was released. So far no problems with Max, Photoshop and all other programs that I have installed. Civ 5 and Medieval Total War 2 and Empire Total War works properly.
I have win7 on dual boot, but I prefere to use win8.
About start button - on win8.1 it was "reborn", but I use StartIsGone to remove it.
By the way, I use all the time this - QTTab Bar. It adds tabs on the windows explorer, so there is no need to have 10-20 separate explorers, all is done in one window. The plugins that comes with the program are also very handy to me. Works on win7 and win8.
A tip for smoother workflow in Win8 is to make use of pinning shortcuts to the start screen. Let's say you use UDK and want an editor shortcut for your project called "My Awesome Project Editor", right click your shortcut and Pin to Start. (you can delete the shortcut afterwards) If you want to run the editor in the future, just press Win-button and type the name directly on the Start Screen. I stopped using programs like Launchy or Executor because this works good enough.
When you get used to typing your way to shortcuts and other features in the start screen you'll probably appreciate Win8 more. I have not installed 8.1 yet but I heard it has a better way to show results when typing.
The only real gripe I have with Win8 over Win7 is that the task manager is opened like a normal program now, which can take ages to start. (if it pops up at all...) The contents of the task manager is definitely better, it is however extremely annoying when a program like the browser decides to crash and it takes a minute to force a close because you have to wait for the task manager to appear.
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The biggest difference really is the lack of a start menu, so if you are used to explore that menu with your mouse, you may get confused, but if you already use "Window key" and then type what you are looking for, you'll be fine.
I actually like the fact that you can split your screen and have let's say Maya on 9/10th of the screen and skype or your emails on the remaining part, keeps me from alt-tab'ing all the time.
As for programs, Zbrush, Fusion, Houdini, Photoshop, Modo, VisualStudio, xNormal works. That's all I tested.
As for experience. I like where Microsoft is going. W8 was rushed to market but 8.1 seems a lot more polished. Another 0.1 release and it will be really good windows version. I love splitting screen. Can be addictive
Latest Cryengine 64 works fine here. So far no issues at all.
I don't have any problems with Unity and Max/Maya.
I have win7 on dual boot, but I prefere to use win8.
About start button - on win8.1 it was "reborn", but I use StartIsGone to remove it.
By the way, I use all the time this - QTTab Bar. It adds tabs on the windows explorer, so there is no need to have 10-20 separate explorers, all is done in one window. The plugins that comes with the program are also very handy to me. Works on win7 and win8.
When you get used to typing your way to shortcuts and other features in the start screen you'll probably appreciate Win8 more. I have not installed 8.1 yet but I heard it has a better way to show results when typing.
The only real gripe I have with Win8 over Win7 is that the task manager is opened like a normal program now, which can take ages to start. (if it pops up at all...) The contents of the task manager is definitely better, it is however extremely annoying when a program like the browser decides to crash and it takes a minute to force a close because you have to wait for the task manager to appear.