Which one of those is preferable? It seems to me that they are both historically based. 10 x 10 is also 100 in base-12 (it's only in base-10 that it looks like 144).

IMHO, in a modern setting base-16 would be the most convenient. Then I maybe wouldn't struggle to remember that the CIDR range C0.A8.0.0/18 (192.168.0.0/24) consists of 10 (16) blocks of size 10 (16).