My experience with windows 8 has been quite good.
It uses less RAM and starts up ALOT faster.
I'm also using Start is back to get the start menu back and with that it really just feels like a better looking Win 7
You can press the engine stop button on the collective and fully close the throttle with the mouse.
After the landing just increase the throttle again.
I get alot better framerates in DCS, Arma 3 and rFactor 2 on a 7870.
with some older titles (Nascar Racing 2003 and Richard Burns Rally) I got some minor issues though.
If it was in multiplayer it was propably due to latency.
I'd guess that a destroyed unit has a higher priority than the position of the actual missile.