Since you can now opt out of some of the more coercive "features" that were present when V8 was first released, I would say 7 and 8 should present about the same user experience. But unfortunately the V8 GUI is way inferior to the V7 GUI, which I thought was really excellent.
Change for the sake of change is almost always a step backwards, and change because of how an OS vendor, especially Microsoft, views the world this week is unalloyed folly, Microsoft will oscillate between minimalist and maximalist schemes from now until the end of time.
Give it your best shot and let them copy you.