Windows 10 Home. PCWorld also has a cheap update deal going on which eliminates many of the cost concerns. Pay attention, though: more and more devices are opting for Windows 10 Home, including Microsoft’s Surface “Pro” hardware. This is usually the choice of enthusiasts, but it offers no support or even instructions from Microsoft. Microsoft created a useful webpage for comparing the different Windows 10 versions , breaking down the reasons to upgrade to Windows Pro into four categories: the fundamentals, management and deployment, security, and Windows updates.

All of them have some relevance for power users and more traditional businesses alike. While there are dozens of differences check our original review of Windows 10 for the details , seven key aspects of Windows 10 Professional will help you decide whether the upgrade is worth it for you.

Yes, seven: Microsoft has added another! The differences between Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Professional lie under the hood. On the desktop, your experience should be roughly the same. Since Windows 8. If a drive is encrypted, BitLocker will encrypt other files that are added to it. You also have the option to suspend encryption or remove it entirely. Files moved from a BitLocker encrypted drive to another drive are automatically decrypted.

Saving it to your Microsoft account is recommended. A cloud storage solution like OneDrive can be a great way to store your files, but a USB key encrypted with BitLocker and clipped to a keychain can provide an additional layer of security and keep precious files close at hand.

Only Windows 10 Professional machines can be remotely controlled, however—not Windows 10 Home machines. Remote Assistance is designed as an educational tool, so that a remote technician can show you how to adjust your graphics settings, for example, by moving your mouse. The upshot is that work machines can be accessed from home, but home machines can be controlled only from work. If you run a small business, Remote Desktop Connection is another reason to consider Windows 10 Professional.

Not many business professionals will probably care about virtualization, the ability to wall off a portion of your hard drive into a virtual PC, complete with its own operating system. But for enthusiasts—especially those who wish to continue testing Insider builds without risking their main system—Hyper-V is just the thing.

In fact, virtualization is a key technology that appears in several ways within Windows 10 Pro. Virtualization creates a secure operating environment within your PC that allows you to run different operating systems, including Linux, future builds of Windows 10, and even older versions of Windows. Just make sure you still have valid license keys for the operating system and a PC processor that supports virtualization—not all older models do.

Windows will suggest that you install some optional features. Our sister site Infoworld offers a great introduction to Hyper-V. Windows 10 Home pushes patches to your PC immediately, allowing you to defer installation for a few hours, but no longer.

For some, that might not be the most desirable option. Windows 10 Professional offers an option, as our tutorial in how to manage Windows 10 updates explains. While Microsoft has now made many of these options now available to Windows 10 Home, the ability to defer feature updates for up to days is still reserved for Windows 10 Pro. There’s a small, annoying change as part of the Windows 10 May Update, however.

Normally, Windows allows you to defer feature updates by days. That policy is still in place, but that option has been removed from the Windows Update advanced options page. Now, you’ll need to go into the Local Group Policy Editor, which is normally a tool for enterprise admins, and make the change. Type edit group policy into the Windows Search box. You might not be able to download a file, unless you change a policy setting. Essentially, Sandbox provides a simplified way to launch a self-contained virtual environment, without the need for license keys or anything else.

Sandbox debuted in the Windows 10 May Update. But the security is worth it. Sandbox carves out part of your operating system for its own use, and when you close the window, everything within it vanishes. Sandbox files can be downloaded to your PC, and are still accessible when you close the Sandbox app.

That makes everything slightly less secure, but more convenient. Sandbox can also be used as a way to surf the web securely.

Though the default Sandbox environment contains a bare-bones Windows installation complete with Edge , you can download Chrome or any other app. Several features in Windows 10 Professional are aimed squarely at the business market. Domain join, for example, allows you to bring in your own PC and connect it to the office domain.

Group policy management allows an IT admin to control which PCs do what. Likewise, if your business needs specialized enterprise apps, an admin can lock down the Windows Store to make sure employees get those, and nothing else. Some users may find some value in Assigned Access, which takes a Windows tablet and allows it to run only a particular application. Normally this setup is used for a dedicated kiosk, but it might kid-proof a tablet, too.

Moving to Windows 10 Professional makes sense for people who could use its more advanced features—and adding more of them, over time, makes it more appealing. We really like Sandbox! Windows 10 Home will suffice for the majority of individual or family users.

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Windows 10 Pro Education builds on the commercial version of Windows 10 Pro and provides important management controls needed in schools. Windows 10 Pro. Download Windows 10 upgrade benefits for customers with subscriptions in the CSP program from Official Microsoft Download Center · Surface.

Windows 10 Pro vs Home: What’s the difference? | PC Gamer

 
Windows Update for Business can help businesses reduce management costs, provide control over update deployments, enable more efficient delivery of updates, and provide access to the latest innovations windws Microsoft. As for the Taskbar, Microsoft has collapsed the search box into an icon and also removed the Cortana functions in Windows