For anyone that's interested, I can confirm that the monitor profiling device Spyder2 works okay with Windows 8.
At first you might not think that it does. Once you've installed the software, and then plugged in the Spyder 2, Windows 8 gives the appearance of locating the driver and installing it.
It doesn't. It's a con.
If you run the software after Windows has finished 'installing' it, the software can't find your Spyder2 - and no amount of selecting it in the drop-down box will change that.
There's no point going to the device manager. The only way I'd discovered that Windows hadn't installed the device was by running the troubleshooter - at which point it tried to find the drivers for the Spyder2 and failed. Until this point, I had no idea that its previous attempt had failed. Microsoft must believe that ignorance is bliss and that you didn't really need to know whether Windows 8 had installed your hardware or not. That's handy - not!
Downloading the latest driver from the ColorVision website and installing that enables your Spyder2 software to detect the Spyder2 hardware and, after that, it works.
Windows 8 may look cool with its fancy boxes telling you it's installing the hardware and locating the drivers, but it's all a nasty con made to make you think Windows 8 is better than it is. It won't tell you when it fails to do something, it'll just hide its failures behind disappearing progress boxes leaving you to wonder why your device doesn't work. You might think that much of your hardware just isn't compatible and needs replacing. Don't be fooled. That's just Windows 8 tricking you.