Check if there's an updated bios available as some are adding w8 fast boot options.
Firstly, with yours being a laptop, if it has an ssd I would partition it so that it has a hibernation partition i.e. with an id = 84 and the same size as your ram i.e. 8192 = 8GB. This will allow use of intel rapid start technology if your bios supports it. Next if it's only a small ssd I would ensure you have the latest intel rapid storage technology drivers including the floppy disk set (all preferably from your motherboard / laptop manufacturer) so you can supply these during the w8 install. Set the hard disk controller to raid in the bios before commencing with the w8 install. Again this is if your bios supports it, if it does it will allow you to use a small ssd to cache the hdd. If you have a larger ssd you may not want to use this cache option, just set sata controller to ahci prior to install.
I booted from the w8 upgrade usb stick that I made with the upgrade assistant. When it boots from this it gives you 2 upgrade options, the first was worded such that it recognised the presence of another os and would incorporate user files, apps, settings from that. This first option is riskier imho if you want the most stable system going forward it's better back up what you want to keep to an external drive. I chose the 2nd option from the w8 install screen which gave me a clean install. After install I checked it had activated and was showing as being the 64bit version. Check windows update and install what it suggests. For me this included intel vga driver for integrated graphics so I didn't need to download this one from motherboard manufacturer.
At this stage if you have backed up what you wanted to keep from the old os and have a list of programs you had installed in the old os, along with any licence keys, you can then delete the partitions holding the old os, providing the new install made it's own 'system reserved' partition, the 350MB one.
At this stage it's just a case of downloading w8 drivers / utilities from motherboard makers website and installing these. Things like intel chipset, intel management engine, lan/nic, integrated sound/thx etc, 3rd party sata driver if you have asmedia ports for instance, lucid virtue mvp if you use it.
If you did the ssd steps above, then install intel rapid start technology and rapid storage technology to configure the ssd cache.
Get free windows media center licence so you can play dvd's, use add w8 features to enter key.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/feature-packs
At this stage I would tweak a few things to your personal liking and create a drive image so you have that to fall back on if things get bloated etc you'll have a way to return to a fresh state. Keep this drive image on a different drive. If you dont have a drive image program then use w8 drive refresh option to create a similar drive backup or do this as well.
Now I would install the latest, ideally w8 version of each application from their respective provider that you had installed in your old os.
Decide on an AV solution if you want to use something better than the inbuilt windows solution. More details on AV effectiveness can be found at avcomparitives.org
You might also want to create another drive image at this stage after you've supplied any licence keys for any applications that needed them so that you don't need to route these out again.
Then reintroduce user files and decide on a backup solution.