Yes! I was doubtful at first having read the bad reviews but I find it very good - quicker in every respect and easy to use.
It seems a bit strange at first (no start button!) but you will soon get the hang of it.
Don't forget to check that you've got the hardware to run W8 - I would imagine that it requires a quicker processor / video card and more RAM than XP did.
If you want to run Windows 8 on your PC, here's what it takes:
Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2 (more info)
RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver
MS have been making Windows might lighter recently.
Installing any operating system, even XP, will give the pc a new lease of life. Worth doing once every two or three years - but not for the faint hearted.
I believe you need XP Service Pack 3 to upgrade to Windows 8 without actually doing a fresh install. Don't forget also you'll lose your system settings and applications, which will need reinstalling.
And of course you'll be backing up your files beforehand :-)