Yes, there are still the compatability options such as OS version, screen size, color etc. Not had to use it much at all though, less than win7 but that’s just a guess.

That fixes the start menu, partially, but not the flat look of everything else. And of course nothing can fix all the applications which follow this design philosophy to be consistent with Windows.

Sorry, are you asking for one? I don’t have anywhere to share things (don’t use online storage). It’s a simple process though, download the portableapps program from website and run it. This will install the platform to the pendrive. Then you start it from the exe on the drive and it provides a menu with apps and options and such like. Using that menu you can install or uninstall from the official apps website (you can also see the list on the website), but you can also install from specifically created files, ie you can download an installer as often other apps are a available but not in the official repo. For example there is the Lazarus programming environment for Delphi:
https://portableapps.com/node/27339
Just download the file and from the portableapps gui install it. Real easy and loads to choose from.

Then there are other apps out there which are portable themselves, sharpdevelop for instance can be unzipped and run from anywhere. I also used to have games like Diablo on there.

Main link: https://portableapps.com/
Apps: https://portableapps.com/apps

If you mean going to game (shortcut) properties and the Compatibility tab there, yes it is there also on Windows 10.

However, the issues you may face with some older games in Windows 10 may be different from Windows 7, My experience (since I install and play older, even CD/DVD retail, games on them both):

1. Windows 10 sometimes has performance issues or graphical glitches with some games that I don't see with the same game in Windows 7, for instance the GOG versions of Baldur's Gate classic, Icewind Dale, Might & Magic 9 etc. The first thing I usually try is to use dgVoodoo2 utility with these games, it seems to take care of quite many GPU-related problems with old games running in Windows 10. (With Icewind Dale 2 I actually used the ddwrapper utility to fix its graphical glitches and jerky scrolling in Windows 10, but I presume dgVoodoo2 could have worked as well.)

2. With some games there may be performance issues in Windows 10 fullscreen mode, like I had with a Steam game called Geometry Dash (it ran jerkily on Windows 10), even though it was a relatively new game. The fix in this case was to change the game display setting from within the game to either windowed mode, or "borderless windowed" or whatever it was called. Setting the game to true fullscreen in Windows 10 caused those problems at least back when I tried it.

3. The copy protection of many CD/DVD games doesn't work in Windows 10, they are blocked in Windows 10. By default they are blocked also in Windows 7, but in 7 you can "unblock" them manually. The same doesn't appear to be possible in Windows 10, so the only option in 10 to get those games to work is to find and apply some kind of noCD crack.

4. Microsoft seems to sometimes deactivate some older video decoders etc. which they don't consider relevant anymore, which is why e.g. Two Worlds' in-game videos stopped working in Windows 10 at some point. (Naturally the same would have happened in Windows 7 if MS had decided to do the same there, but apparently they didn't.). The only way to overcome that is to re-encode the Two Worlds video files to some other format that Win10 still supports, with an utility like ffmpeg.

5. There is one case where Windows 10 is actually better with older games: it doesn't have that "rainbow color" graphical glitch that Windows Vista/7 Aero caused with many games. However it is quite easy to get rid of that problem in Windows 7, there are several ways to achieve it.

The most annoying "feature" for me is how the system stops feeding back whilst it is "busy", e.g. when transferring a large file between drives, like when loading a Gog executable from the internet via a thumbdrive. It also does this when it first boots and I am trying to type my password. Seriously, Windows 3.11 had "pre-emptive" (pseudo-) multitasking that was not as clunky as this. Whether intended or not, it is now almost impossible (certainly not recommended) to do anything else whilst a file is copied between drives, which for a couple of 4GB game executables can take up to half an hour with old USB protocols.

I use keyboard shortcuts for everything. (I can load my favourite spreadsheet or word file in four keys, each) and the continual attrition of keyboard control in the OS is probably the reason I will jettison the OS for *nix.

I can't see myself ever buying another version of Windoze.

I concur with this. No problems and no updates since I installed the OS last year.
Any problems since?

I have turned off a lot of crap, but I hesitate to remove things because one cannot know just how integral some of these ancillary apps may be … either by design or accident. So another part of the OS may use the bit you removed, without telling you.

Fortunatelly, we've moved away from slow HDD's that can only do 1 thing at the time. I've ranted about this in the past and any modern OS that I've used, will just freeze until the hard drive responds again. Cheap Windows 10 devices are the worst because the slow flash module tend to degrade and slow down very fast, like those HDMI computer sticks (and Win10 needs a fast storage by default to be able to brute-force through all the processes, specially Defender, Super fetch and Indexer).
This happens also in earlier versions of Windows and Linux Mint (don't know about other distros).

I can understand to a point, many people criticizing modern OS's for using lots of RAM but I will gladly have a Linux desktop that uses 3Gb by itself and don't rely so heavly on storage. Back to Puppy Linux and Slax I go...

isn't a HDD more reliable than an SSD? I heard a HDD has a better life span than an SSD.

I have my data on mechanical drives.

I don't know really.
Most cheap devices have a eMMC uses flah that are no better than a typical USB pen-drive, coupled with Win10 high disk usage...

Lab conditions are not real world. Servers are not the same as external storage, context is important.
Have a box of failed hard drives (mostly not mine) and had only 1 failed SSD ever, wich was very old (2012 or 2013), abused and connected to a old system that had a failing Power Supply. Windows install got corrupted (as did many files) and a 32 Gb USB pendrive never worked again. This happened during a power outage.
After that, formatted the same Micron SSD and is still used today as a external storage over USB to transfer files.

Of course, HDD are more prone to fail if used externally, like I do with SSD's (bought some to be used as pen-drives since they were way cheaper and faster).
Many users of USB HDD can tell you how reliable they are.

I think you're using Win10 like Windows XP, which I'm not. Win10 is designed to search quickly, not use the start menu. When I want to launch device manager or whatever I hit the Windows key and type "dev" and it pops right up and I hit enter. There's no reason to slowly use the mouse to navigate the start menu interface really. When I launch a game it's either from a client or from a desktop shortcut. When I want to launch a client, I use a taskbar shortcut.

Not saying there aren't plenty of people like yourself who use the "old way," but 99.9% seems like a hefty personal bias estimate. ;)

How come HDD is more prone to fail if used externally?

Heartfelt thanks for all the gread advice in this thread. This is being really useful.

I will add my two cents, from fresh experience, about aspects of the transition process that still have not been mentioned, for those who might find themselves switching to Windows 10.

Fresh install from a USB

If you install from an ISO, some of the versions of Windows 10 will not fit on a standard DVD. A double layer (DL) DVD might do, but they are hard to find nowadays. It is just better to dedicate a USB pendrive to be your installation drive.

In order to do that, you need to set the partition in the drive as "active". You can do it with DISKPART. Then, you need to mount the ISO on a virtual drive using something like Virtual CloneDrive, then fill the partition using XCOPY

These instructions work, but you better use a drive of at least 5 GB, if you want the larger ISO to fit.

https://davidzych.com/install-windows-10-from-a-usb-flash-drive/

System Reserved Partition: size matters

If you come from Windows 7, it might happen that you have a SRP the size of 100 MB. Windows 10 needs more. It might happen that the OS installs and all seems to be OK. Then, when you start updating the system, eventually one of the large updates will tell you that your PC cannot run Windows 10, without any further explanation. Chances are that it is all about the SRP. Just make it bigger, 500 MB should be fine. The software included in Windows 10 did not help me, but some free privative software did (AOMEI, since EaseUS required the paid version in order to do that).

Multiple accounts

[Edited for simplicity]
It might be a good idea to have more than one account in your PC. For example, maybe you might want a separate account for playing games. You have to know that Windows 10, by default, might not show you all the accounts on the PC. You might want the list of accounts to appear, so that it is easier to login. In order to do that, you just need to use Regedit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System, change a new DWORD parameter named dontdisplaylastusername with the value 1.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/9134-do-not-display-last-signed-user-name-windows-10-sign.html]

That site mentions two methods. I tried only the second one and it worked. There are other methods in the Web but they might be related to older versions of the OS. Just do this when you are all updated.

Ah, so you use the start menu after all.

So if you never navigate the menu to find even the rarely used applications or settings, that must mean you have magically memorized each and every application and setting in your system, so that you can always find all of them with a mere search, never having selected them from the Start menu even when running them for the first time in order to pin them to the taskbar. Magic.

Your whole "you use Wndows 10 like XP" is stupid if you paid any attention, as I already explained how I e.g. go to the firewall settings. Gee, I used exactly the same "advanced" Start menu search method as you.

It could be cooling related. But in my experience (I have 7 active USB hard drives), they don't run that much hotter than my internal ones (in a big case with good cooling).

Usually, when people mention USB drive failure, they don't differentiate between HDD failure and enclosure failure.

You can also right click on the start menu wich for me, takes even less time than use the keyboard. That small "Win+X" menu is one of the reasons I feel Win7 feels slower and outdated than 8.1. That menu and the desktop shortcuts, for me, pretty much replaced the whole classic start menu.