[WildGary]

I would recommend getting the most resources (processor and RAM) in the machine that fits in your budget. The rest is all software and configuration. Windows 8 is the microsoft OS to attempt to compete in the tablet market. By that, I mean unless you have a touchscreen monitor, you probably won't like it.

Depending on how involved you get with your computing, with enough resources your machine can be configured to do almost anything. Again depending on how involved you want to get, you could build a virtual machine inside the machine and try out any OS you want to see if you like it. If you don't, just delete the virtual machine.