Windows 7 vs Windows 8?

[Radii]

I'm probably buying a new PC soon (in the next week, possibly in the next couple days), I'm curious what the tech savvy folks here recommend at this point. I hear lots of anecdotal evidence against Win 8 (lots of people having trouble with applications they were using just fine on Win 7, etc), but I'm not sure what concerns are legit and what constitutes complaining about change.

I need to be able to run Visual Studio 2010 without any issues as a top priority, after that Cisco's VPN client, SQL Server Management Studio, League of Legends, and steam games, if there are any known issues w/ any of that...

[Solecismic]

I'm having no issues with VS 2008, which crashed a lot on Vista. I tried a Steam game, and it's fine.

The major problems I've had are with media. Getting video to run is a pain in the codex. I suppose I should have gone with Windows 8 Pro, but no guarantees there. Sometimes the sound goes out for no reason. It always comes back.

I've also struggled with printers. The printer manufacturers like to put pressure on you to buy new printers, so they don't make new drivers for old machines. I have everything working, but have to jump through more hoops.

Getting used to no Start menu was fairly trivial. I like the faster boot. I like the taskbar, and how it handles multiple instances of programs.

I don't think it's a huge deal which you go with, but I'd look up whether there are any problems with specific pieces of key software first.