I also prefer 8 to 7. The problem is that neither is highly intuitive, meaning that it's not the interface we are used to from other programs that are Windows-based. I can understand that someone might get used to finding things in 7 and then not find them in the same place in 8, so that might make it harder to use 8 for a while. But if you start with 8, that would not be a problem. 8 has more features, and has fixed some problems that were in previous versions, so I would definitely recommend starting with it.