Windows 8 Boots faster, wakes up faster. The GUI seems about the same to me, a lower end machine may find the GUI to be faster as Aero is gone.
You just need to consider the Windows 8 menu screen like you would the Windows 7 start menu. It just covers the entire screen. You can ignore all the Windows 8 full screen applications for the most part, I am sure they are nice on a tablet but not on my 27" desktop screen.
I find it easier to move between a Windows 7 machine at work and my Windows 8 machine at home then between XP and Windows 7, the old work home combination.
The utility of the windows 8 full screen apps has improved quite a bit now that you can partition a large screen pretty freely with three or four of them. Even before then, I quite enjoyed using a few W8 apps because they could be laid out independently of the desktop, allowing Aero-snap to work more efficiently on the more transient windows.
(These would usually be chat apps that I'd keep open in a panel).
Could someone speak briefly to the "faster" part of the parent's description?
I'm currently reinstalling and have the choice between 7 and 8.