Windows 8 works surprisingly well. I'm trying out the Release Preview on my laptop since it's also a tablet. I find it runs faster and smoother than Windows 7. The touchscreen seems more responsive than before too. My only issue is how the laptop was built since the frame surrounding the screen has a slight rise, it kinda makes it hard to do some of the gestures on the touchscreen.
I'm not using SRT with my SSD. It's being used as my OS drive as well as programs I want to load quickly.