I am legitimately curious to know what programs you are having compatibility problems with. I have actually found Win8 to be one of the most backwards-compatible OS upgrades I ever had to deal with. All of my heavy duty image processing programs are running fine, Java is no more or less painful than before, my DOS emulator is chugging along (sans sound) just like it used to, and even most of my hardware drivers are showing no bugs. What's been broken for you?
It's absolutely horrendous. There are multiple work programs which we DO NOT WISH TO BUY again that do not work.
However, for the more common elements, talking simply on games, none of the craft series (such as warcraft, starcraft, etc...even the updated versions which worked under Win7) seem to work. Diablo does not work, Rise of Nations does not work, Star Fleet Command 1, 2, and 3 do not work, arcanum does not work, Conquest frontier wars does not work...in fact anything that was over 7 years old that was compatible or had work arounds to work on Win7 do NOT work. Unless you only utilize programs from the past 5 years...it's most likely not going to work, and when it does it's hit and miss what will or what won't work.
You'd think that with a Win7 base they'd utilize the same backwards compatibility, but no, they didn't.
Part of it is that it appears they strengthened the "anti-piracy" protocols, but in doing so they basically negated many of the older programs and disabled them from working.
Hence, unless a company wants to buy all new software, or a gamer wants to abandon most of their old games...it's useless.
Love it for the new programs and how we can organize the interface, but for older programs and compatibility, it's the worst release yet.