Windows 10 Home vs. Pro vs. Education Comparison?

 The free upgrade period for Windows 10 is behind us now, and - despite some initial wording that suggested otherwise - Microsoft has drawn lines in the sand between the multiple “Editions” of Windows 10 - Home, Pro ,Enterprise, and Education. But what are these differences? I’m helping make tech easier to understand a more fun through free educational videos. Today we’re going to be focusing on Windows10 Home, Pro, and Education to see which version you need to pick up for your needs. We’ll be using the comparison charts directly from Microsoft and discussing them within more practical, realistic expectations. Let’s start with the easy one - Windows10 Education. 

Microsoft has partnered with some universities(which just means the schools may or may not have bought the appropriate licensing contracts)which gives their students the most robust version of Windows 10 there is. Education edition has literally every comparable feature except for Cortana. It’s the only version without Cortana, too. I… what.. You… okaaayyyyy…. Students will also receive a subscription to Office 2016 for the duration of their enrollment, as well. Now that Education is out of the way - should you get Home or Pro? For a wide majority of users, the Home edition will be perfectly tine. It has the vast majority of features any normal- home - users (see how that works?) should need. The features limited to the pro are primarily business infrastructure-based. According to Microsoft, Pro gives you the ability to: Create and join a domain - a specific work/business level network Use bit locker encryption - which is not something I recommend using Set up group policy management Use Remote Desktop (though my Windows 10 home versions let me use this just fine over my home network, so maybe this only applies to over the internet)User Hyper-V Virtualization for running virtual machines with better access to your CPU - which again, I was able to enable in my BIOS on Windows 10 home, so I’m not sure what’s going on with that. Use Enterprise Mode Internet Explorer - law Use Windows Store for Business Set up secure, Trusted Boot Modes Use wide-deployment Windows Update for Business And use more than 128GB of RAM - up to 2TB-- Which is only going to be a high-end server thing for a long time. 

Despite this list, for all intents and purposes Windows 10 Home is all most people need. I’m a power user and I can still do everything I need to with just Windows 10 home - like I said, virtualization and RDP still work fine for me, and my CPU doesn’t support more than 64 gigs of RAM anyway. But if you’re setting up a business network, you’ll need Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise -

- You don’t need Windows 10 Pro, but if you’re attending a university, try to get your hands on a Windows 10 Education license. I hope this article was helpful to you.