Week of wonder

It seems like a strange title for a post I know. It was all that came to my mind whilst I was typing. This week so far has seemed a little bit strange. The snowy weather, the schools being closed and my family having time off whilst I've had to work.
I've decided that our family PC needs a Windows reinstall. It's slowly been getting slower and I think it needs a change. I've backed up most of the data, just a few things to do and then I can start over. It takes a bit of planning to do a Windows reinstall, that is if you don't want to lose any data. Personal files are stored in different places by different applications, not all in My Documents. Some apps store files that are used in strange places. I'll also need to have the license keys of software I have downloaded. Sometimes it involves digging around in my email folders to retrieve account details. Yup, there is more to the business of a reinstall than meets the eye.
The rest of this week looks set to be a busy one. I'll perform the reinstall at the weekend. I've yet to decide whether to upgrade to Windows 8, that's my other decision of the week: do I get back to a manufacturer install of Windows 7 and create a clean restore point. Or do I get back to the manufacturer install of Windows 7 and then upgrade to Windows 8 on the top of that? And then reinstall my applications on Windows 8? Is there any point moving to Windows 8? Has anybody out there used it? What did you think? I'm interested in hearing about your experience.