Some of the complaints I've seen about multiple steps to do things that once were like 1-2 steps, I understand. That was a gripe I had with Win 8/8.1 (all the navigation changes were centric on having a touch screen and that's what in my opinion caused the OS to flop, not keeping in mind the numerous non-touch devices that would use the OS). That was driven by Steve Balmer CEO (the guy who replaced Gates). I believe I heard a new CEO is in and that's part of the changes in Win10 to be more of a marriage for touch and non-touch devices.

Now, there are some new menus and shortcuts that came about in Win8/8.1 that are still in 10 and some new stuff for 10. Such as right clicking on the Start button brings back some useful features. On Win10, I use Internet Explorer 11 (not the Edge browser) and that works fine for my needs (granted, I am not accessing the forums on Win10 as I have not yet upgraded my home machine).

I am running PowrTuner with zero issues on a an old Dell Latitude D430 (2-3GB of RAM, Centrino processor, made on the Vista/XP border line). That laptop is running Win8 (not 8.1, never made that jump) and it is better then Win7 was. PowrTuner works great on it to, same with TinyTuner, zero issues.
Keep in mind, because of the dream for a more unified OS on tablets/desktops/laptops/phones, Microsoft tried to improve the "do more with less" attitude with Win8/8.1, hence the elimination of things like Aero and some of the "bling" brought in with Win7. What they failed on was end-user navigation (hence why Classic Shell is an AWESOME fix for the Win8/8.1 issues people have).

Out of all the years I have worked doing I.T. work, clean install of the OS and current drivers has ALWAYS been the way to go (well, actually going from Win95 to 98 was pretty seamless). That is spot on advice, as you need to do the original in-place upgrade to 10, then you can wipe the machine and fresh install 10. Granted, I know a lot of people who said they did the in place upgrade and no issues.