I will say that with enough group policy and sysinternals turning absolutely everything off, turning all of the settings to maximum performance lowest flashiness, no web results, killing Cortana with reckless abandon my Windows installation is actually what I would consider to be snappy. I was surprised.

It doesn't make it any better that Microsoft does this, but as a piece of practical advice, it seems like it can be done. There does still exist a core of Windows under all that garbage that is fast.