Blast you and your "happy song"! I too wanted to stay with 2008, but couldn't get the express edition to register after my Win 7 upgrade! 2008 was not only prettier, it was clearer as well. Still .Net 4 has some nice parallel stuff which makes it almost worthwhile.

Thanks for the detailed low down. Why oh why do they have make everything so flat and bland! How is that an improvement? I found this with Visual Studio 2013 after 2008 - went back to 2010 in the end (despite the ghastly purple). So, I'm on Win 7, which is fine and there I'm going to stay until some of the feedback filters through. So, that will be the end of time then...