Windows 10 comes in a number of different editions, but which one should
you buy? Is it worth paying for Pro over Home?
What about the Enterprise edition? I'm going to cover the differences
between them, and I'm also going to mention a couple of extra versions that
you might not have heard about.
Welcome back to the Pro Tech Show. Today we're talking about Windows 10,
and the different editions that it comes in. Let's start by comparing Windows 10
Home against Windows 10 Pro, then we'll move
on to the Enterprise edition, and then we'll talk about a couple of
those extra versions.
For general home use, the difference between Home and Pro boils down to a
list of features that most home users won't care about.
For businesses on the other hand, it's a very different story.
If you try to run Home edition in a business you're going to run
straight into a management and security nightmare. The most fundamental
difference between Home and Pro is Pro's ability to be joined to Active
Directory, or at least to Azure AD. Active Directory is the cornerstone of
most business networks. It provides centralised authentication,
security, management, and automation for every single device
and user on the network. If you're ever tempted to try and build a business
network using Home edition to save a few pennies...
don't. Believe me, I've seen it and it will cost you.
So if you're a business and you can't count your employees on one hand,
then the choice is clear; but what if you're a home user?
Is there any reason to pay for Pro over Home?
Well, yes. I'd say the case is limited to IT professionals and enthusiasts,
but they're also the same kind of people who watch this channel, so here we go.
The professional management tools that you get with Pro can give you more
control over different components of your operating system.
If you're an enthusiast, that might be helpful. If you're the type to build a
homelab then you're basically running a
business network anyway; so Windows 10 Pro will give you access to all that
server-side goodness that you've deployed.
If you want to run the management tools on your computer as well, then you're
going to need Pro for that. That doesn't work with Home. By the way,
if you're considering building a homelab then check out my video on how to
plan for it. One of the Oro features I use all the
time is Remote Desktop. Both Home and Pro do have the Remote
Desktop Client, and can connect to remote computers;
but only Pro can host the remote session. That means you can connect to your Pro
computer using Home, but if you're running Home on a computer then you
can't connect to that using anything. Now, if you're using Home and you want
that sort of functionality, you can install third-party tools to do
something similar. Something like TeamViewer for example.
But there is something to be said about it being built-in and not having to go
out to some third party on the internet. Virtualisation is another benefit of
upgrading to Pro. Using Windows 10 Pro you can create and run virtual machines
using Hyper-V. That's really handy for testing
things out, or for running a limited homelab.
You also get Windows Sandbox, which is essentially a
quick, lightweight, and disposable virtual machine that's isolated from the rest
your operating system. That can be handy if you've had to
download something from the internet, and you need to run it, but you're not 100%
sure if you should trust it. Uou can create virtual machines and run
them using third-party software such as VirtualBox or VMware workstation on Home
edition, but those are type 2 hypervisors which
means they sit on top of the operating system.
Hyper-V by comparison is a type 1 hypervisor, which means it has direct
access to the hardware, and that makes it more efficient. The
final reason you might want to choose Pro over Home
is support for encryption. Windows 10 Pro supports both the older Encrypting File
System which works on a per-file basis, and the newer BitLocker which encrypts
the entire drive. In most cases it's BitLocker you want.
Officially, neither of these are supported on
Windows 10 Home... but that's not completely true. Windows 10 Home does
support device encryption... which is BitLocker.
The differences are that with the Home edition you don't really get any control
other than it being turned on or turned off;
and it only supports a TPM unlock method, not a PIN.
The other thing you get with "proper" BitLocker is support for BitLocker to go.
You know those expensive encrypted UCB drives? Well, plug in a regular USB
drive, right-click, "Turn BitLocker on", and I just saved you some money.
In terms of performance, Home and Pro are the same.
You're not going to get better performance by spending extra money to
get Pro. Take that money and put it into better
hardware instead. There is a difference in the maximum
supported hardware though. Home tops out at 1 CPU,
64 cores, and 128 GB of RAM; which is let's face it, more than enough
for most people. Pro on the other hand will go up to 2
CPUs, 128 cores, and 2 TB of RAM. Now, for most people
that's not going to matter, but there are certain workloads that can
benefit from it. By the way, if you're finding this useful
then drop a like and hit the subscribe button to get updates on future videos.
Well, that's Pro covered. Let's talk about Enterprise.
The Enterprise edition is only available through business channels, so it's
probably not an option for most home users.
You can't really buy Windows 10 Enterprise outright - what you buy is an
upgrade licence that assumes you already have a Pro licence to begin with.
That makes this the most expensive option. Now...
yeah, I have to mention this because I can see the comments already. If you type
"Windows 10 Enterprise" into Google, you're going to
see some results that seem to contradict that.
You're going to see it on sale to anyone, and probably a ridiculously low price.
That's perhaps a topic for another day, but what I will say is you're unlikely
to be seeing those through legitimate channels.
Now there are legitimate sellers of second-hand licenses,
who have relationships with Microsoft, and the companies who originally owned
the licences, and they have the legal paperwork to
back up where each of those licenses came from.
From what I've seen, they're not usually the ones that turn up in those search
results with the prices attached, though. In those cases, it's probably part of a
massive trade in grey market licences, which are dodgy at best, and depending on
where you live and how you use them may or may not be illegal. There are also
stolen licenses mixed up in there; and I'm not just saying that - I have
personally seen it happen. Now, I can't see what's on your computer screen
and there's more going on than i can cover here,
so I'm not going to try and make any judgment on it. I'm just going to give
you that information, and what you do with it is up to you.
What I will cover are some of the main differences between Pro
and Enterprise, and why you might want to spend your hard-earned cash on the
latter. First up is ReFS - the Resilient File
System. Compared to the traditional NTFS file
system, ReFS is more resistant to data degradation
over time, also known as bit rot. This is an important issue in the datacentre
where data storage volumes are growing larger and larger all the time.
Windows 10 Home and Pro can use an ReFS volume,
but they can't create one in the first place. Only Windows 10 Enterprise can do
that. One of the main reasons people used to
flock to Windows 10 Enterprise was for DirectAccess.
That creates an encrypted connection from your device back to your workplace
as soon as the device is online, giving you access to your corporate
network. It was like having a VPN connected
all the time, and it made life a lot easier for remote workers
and the admins who had to support them. Now, DirectAccess hasn't gone anywhere,
but the case for paying the Enterprise upgrade for it these days is a little
less convincing. That's because Microsoft have released
Always On VPN, which does largely the same thing and is available
in Windows 10 Pro. As you can imagine, a lot of people are
migrating from DirectAccess to Always On VPN
and ditching the Enterprise licence. An Enterprise-only feature that doesn't get
a lot of attention, but I think is quite a good one
is Credential Guard. If you've not come across a pass-the-hash attack
before, here's the quick version. If someone gains access to a computer
they can steal the credentials of any account that's logged onto it. They
can then use that to access other computers on the network, and that's how
attackers spread out. It's called lateral movement.
Once they get access to a computer that has an administrator logged on to it,
then it's game over. They now own your network.
Credential Guard uses virtualisation technology to isolate the credentials of
logged-on users away from the rest of the operating
system. That can help stop this sort of attack.
There is a pretty good case for upgrading administrative workstations to
Enterprise edition just for this feature. Enterprise edition
gives you additional ways to lock things down compared to Pro edition.
Like AppLocker for example, which allows you to restrict applications so they can
only run if they've been specifically whitelisted.
If something dodgy does get onto the computer... tough. They can't run it anyway.
You also get the Unified Write Filter which essentially makes your computer
read-only. Once it gets rebooted, any changes that were made are discarded.
You can use that to create a kiosk machine without having to worry too much
about what the user might do to it. Reboot, and it never happened. If you
want a good example of AppLocker is use, then check out my "Is the Cloud
Secure?" video. Microsoft use AppLocker to protect
their Office 365 infrastructure. Another interesting addition you get
with Enterprise is support for App-V. App-V allows you to stream virtualised
applications to your users' desktops, whilst keeping them all in their own
isolated bubble. That's useful to avoid software conflicts, like if you need to
run two different versions of the same software
on the same computer; which sometimes happens if you've got two different
customers with competing software requirements.
Rounding up our Enterprise features we have BranchCache and Windows to Go.
BranchCache keeps a local copy of recently accessed files from a file
share, which can speed up access to frequently
used data at remote locations. Windows to Go allows you to boot Windows
from a USB drive. So, essentially, you can take your
corporate desktop, put it in your pocket, and boot it up off some surrogate
hardware wherever you happen to be working that
day. That can potentially be a cheaper way of letting people work from home,
whilst restricting access to only managed devices,
without actually buying them a managed device. You give them Windows to Go, they
plug it into their home computer, it boots onto their corporate desktop,
which then connects back to the mothership using DirectAccess,
and away they go. That just about covers the feature differences between Pro and
Enterprise. In terms of support, Enterprise gets an
extra 12 months of support, but only on the September release. Remember, there are
two releases Windows 10 every year, so this is the second one.
That can be handy for large enterprises who sometimes struggle with the 18-month
upgrade cycle. Just like going from Home to Pro got you
a bump in hardware support; going from Pro to Enterprise gets you additional
hardware support. Enterprise can cope with up to 4 CPUs,
256 cores, and a whopping 6TB of memory.
And "yes". Fit it with the GPU... it'll run Crysis. But
not any better than the Home edition will.
If you're wondering where E3 and E5 fit into things then,
they're not the operating system. Windows 10 Enterprise E3 and E5
are subscriptions which happen to include the Windows 10 Enterprise
operating system, plus additional services.
Those additional services are Virtual Desktop Access rights,
and in the case of E5 you get Advanced Threat Protection services as well.
Now, I promised you a couple of extras as well, and I wasn't talking about
E3 and E5. In addition to Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise,
you also have Windows 10 Pro for Workstations,
and Enterprise LTSC. Pro for Workstations sits somewhere in-between
Pro and Enterprise. Essentially it has the features of Pro,
and the hardware support of Enterprise. Plus it has ReFS for some reason.
If you have massive hardware requirements, and you don't want to pay
the extra for Enterprise, then this is the niche you're looking
for. Enterprise LTSC stands for Long-Term Servicing
Channel. You know in the days before Windows 10,
the way you used to get a new version of Windows every few years, and it would be
supported for a decade? Well, LTSC uses that same legacy
servicing model, rather than the 6-monthly updates that
the rest of Windows 10 gets. For a lot of admins who are suffering
from update fatigue, this might sound very welcome;
but there are some downsides. It's missing most of the newer apps like Edge,
Cortana, and the Windows Store; and you're probably going to have
software compatibility issues. If you think about it, during the 10 years that
LTSC is supported, it's effectively frozen in time. It's
getting security updates, but it's not getting new features.
Meanwhile, regular Windows 10 is going to go through 20 different versions in the
same period. That's a lot for vendors to support, and
honestly most of them are probably going to focus on supporting the
current mainstream versions of Windows 10. LTSC
isn't intended for normal use. It's more for specific devices that you know
aren't going to change. If you're building an MRI machine and you wanted
to put Windows 10 in it, then you don't want that expensive piece
of equipment breaking in 6 months when the next feature pack comes out;
so in that case you might want to use Enterprise LTSC.
That's about it for today folks. Hopefully this helps you understand the
different editions of Windows 10. If you liked this then you might like
some of my other content over here, so feel free to check out one of those
videos. If you found this one useful, then give it
a like before you go, and don't forget to subscribe for future videos.
Thanks for watching, guys. See you next time!