I got my parents an all in one Toshiba for Xmas. It actually shipped with Win7, but I upgraded it to win8 before giving it to them (was much cheaper this way).

I got my parents an all in one Toshiba for Xmas. It actually shipped with Win7, but I upgraded it to win8 before giving it to them (was much cheaper this way). I gave them a brief walkthrough and they love it. I was surprised at how much they took to the free Xbox music streaming, as they never used Pandora in the past. They're not power users so I told them to stay off of the desktop except for Office (I almost wish I could put RT on it). After they played with it an hour and installed a handful of apps, I asked if I could install some of their old apps and my moms response was, "I don't want mouse apps anymore". I thought that was a success. That said I'd be hesitant moving someone to Win8 if I couldn't get 15 minutes to walk them through it. Its a strength that in 15 minutes I can make most novices prefer it over Win7, but a weakness jn that I think they may be seriously confused if I did not walk them through it.