Windows 8 Professional (full licensed retail version, gets updates, doesn't expire ever) has been out on Dreamspark Premium for a while now. You can get two keys (32 bit and 64 bit but they are interchangeable) and the license covers one desktop and one laptop per key as I recall. They're free and they work forever even after your subscription expires.
I've been running Windows 8 on my laptop for a few weeks now. I quite like the new start menu and being able to snap metro applications on as a sidebar is useful. It take a while to get used to but I find it easier and faster to use than Windows 7. Not having a touch screen or GPS is kind of lame though, although it's easy enough to fix the GPS issue with a USB antenna.
I haven't had any issue with program compatibility although my laptop is missing a few drivers and using generic ones instead. Windows 8 starts up to a usable desktop/menu way faster than Windows 7, boot times on hard drive seem comparable to some older solid state drives now so that's cool. Also Windows 8 has native mounting for floppy, cd/dvd, and virtual disk images which is pretty awesome.
When I hadn't used Windows 8 I thought it was going to flop. I wasn't especially enthusiastic about switching over to it. Now that I use it I think it's probably going to be pretty popular.
One thing that I don't like is that when you install new programs it literally stuffs the icons out all over your start screen. After installing Visual Studio 2010 I had to delete something like 20 tiles off the start menu. You wouldn't normally need to do this on a Windows System because it would stick them all in folders. You can still bring up all your applications by right clicking on the start screen.
I have a friend who installed Windows 8 on his netbook. The resolution of the netbook is so low that metro apps (I guess it's modern now, not metro) won't run. He's switching it back to Windows 7 but his laptop still has 8.
I've got my desktop hooked up to a TV right now (also letting a friend borrow my desktop since I wasn't playing on it much). I'm probably going to order a blu-ray drive and a ssd, when those come in I think I'll format it and put 8 on it since the start menu will probably look nice on a TV. Actually most metro themed applications intended for tablets work well for TVs too, because the metro style in general is good for controlling with a gamepad. No surprise there I guess since they've been using something similar on the xbox for years.
