Hi DM.
Glad it might help some people, regards the win 8 installation as you may see from my update I now have win 8 ev pro installed.
It was a pretty straightforward install, just downloaded the OS from their site, installed it into my external drive, & just loaded it from there, I kept all my old win 7 files just in case but have deleted them since as I have had no problems with this OS, well not major ones anyway.
I quite like the setup took sometime getting used to it, especially as they have done away with the start button, well not so much as done away as moved it to the other side, basically its a gear menu that you click on & it gives you some options, one of them being to switch off your system.
Well it's October now, not long for the 'Happy, Mature horizontally challenged person' (Jolly old Fat Man) to arrive again.
Ben.