Windows 8 is battle ready.
I must say that native driver support is quite phenomenal. I've had a few devices that needed the manufacturer drivers just to work. In 8, plug it in, Windows detects it, and most likely it will start working in a few seconds. Display drivers will need their special drivers, just as before. Under the hood, it's real solid and real stable and REAL fast. Hybrid boot helps a lot with startup from shutting down. There's also Automatic Maintenance feature in 8 that runs disk defragging/optimizing (which you can set to daily to defrag), updates are installed (also less restarting unless there is a major security issue that needs the OS restarted), Windows Defender scans for viruses and such. I believe it also does something to clean up the registry. I've been using/testing Windows 8 since it's early days with the Developer Preview almost a year ago now in a few weeks, literally, no joke, there has been NO boot time degradation or performance degradation that has been lovingly referred to as winrot. My boot times have been incredibly steady and have gotten quicker with each preview was released. Compared with 7, that is a HUGE win. To do that, I would have to use third party utilities to get that to happen, in 8, it's automatic and out of mind.
I haven't tested a huge swath of games, only a few older DX 9 games, like Grand Theft Automobile Vice City. I remember I had to install a 32 bit virtual machine of Windows 7 back in the day to get it working correctly, even Halo 2 as well as 64 bit had some issues with it. I installed the two in 8. GTA VC ran perfectly in 64 bit 8. Halo 2 actually installed but didn't run due to an Xbox Live issue that I didn't try to resolve. In 64 bit 7, that never happened. I remember it would just fail to launch. I would imagine your Steam games will work, probably over 90 percent will I'd guess. If not, install in compatibility mode of Windows 7.
OH! The graphics kernel has been HUGELY optimized in 8. Even older hardware can run 8 and still skip along dandy without horrid graphics performance or limited performance unlike 7.
As for applications, the final last few preview builds of 8 increased and maintained app compatibility of Windows 7 and vista era programs. I've only had a few menial programs not work, but I didn't try to install them in compatibility mode as they were too menial. Actually, I think I've come across two programs. One of which works perfectly fine now with 8, the other needs some work to get it running.
And as for making me feel less like a power user, POSH! The Start Screen still has pretty much all of the functionality of the menu. I can have ALL my libraries, custom and default, pinned to Start whereas in 7, I would have had three awkward Library entries in the MFU portion of the menu. I can access all my main used programs just as fast and even faster than using the menu. I know where everything's at. I also use the new metro styled apps as well, no problems here! The Start Screen is SO malleable to YOU, the user. It's visual, like the classic Desktop, but with little applets of live tiles feeding new info in. You can have a whole plethora of things pinned to it, or you can have a few groups with only a few things pinned on it. It's what you make of it. If you do a lot Desktopping, you can have a lot of Desktop apps pinned ready to be launched. If you want to do both Desktop and immersive apps, you can.
DVD support is kind of gone technically, but you just need to download Media Center (at 12 dollars) or install VLC player or an alternative that is free and WAY better than Media Center. Bleh.
I suggest you dual boot 8 with 7, learn the new things with 8 and learn some tips to make it.... GR8. As I can appreci8, and you shouldn't h8, for I cannot W8 for 8!!