I updated to Win 10 from Win 7 last week, and haven't encountered any problems so far.  Win 10 comes with Edge, the new MS browser that's supposed to be an upgrade for Explorer, but I have avoided using due to temporary incompatibilities with Norton 360 security software.  Everything else that I use (Outlook, Excel, Word, Access, Quicken, Turbo Tax, Adobe Acrobat, not to mention several games that require DirectX) have also worked fine.  External devices (printer, DVD, USB and HDMI) also have worked seamlessly.  Win 10 also gives you the option to use either the tablet-like interface featured in Win 8, or the more traditional interface used in earlier Windows versions such as Win 7 or XP.  I prefer the latter...touch screens are great with your tablet, cellphone, and the nav system in your car, but I don't need or want to replace the mouse on my laptop.  But that's me...your preferences may differ.  Thus far, I haven't had to manually update any drivers, and the old command line interface is still there if you need it.

That being said, anytime you change/upgrade operating systems, it's always plug and pray.  Be prepared for problems.  The fact that this upgrade was relatively painless (all apps working, reconnected to my home Wi-Fi automatically) was somewhat surprising, but it seems MS went to great lengths to ensure that upgrading would be minimally painful.  In my case, this was successful, but YMMV.  There are many new features to explore and play with, and it would be a good idea to go buy a book to help out with the learning curve.    

As for being high-powered, always buy the best laptop that you can afford...my rig has a core i7 CPU, 12 gigs of memory, a terabyte of storage on my primary HD, and nVidia 740M GPU.  More than enough power to do just about anything.