Windows 10 Home: Should I upgrade to Windows 10 Pro?

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HOWTOGEEK.COM - Should You Upgrade to the Professional Edition of Windows 10?

You can pay to upgrade that Windows 10 Home system to Windows 10 Professional — but should you?
If you already had a Professional edition of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, don’t worry.

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Windows 10 Pro Pack Upgrade Costs $99

From within Windows 10 itself, you have the option of paying Microsoft another $99. If you do, your Windows 10 Home system will be upgraded to a Windows 10 Professional system with no Windows reinstall required. All the extra features in Windows 10 Professional will be unlocked.

Spoiler: Windows 10 Pro extras

Assigned Access 8.1

This option allows you to lock a user account down to automatically load a specific universal app and run only that application. It’s ideal for kiosk-type PCs — you could have it automatically load a web browser and restrict users to that, for example.​

BitLocker and EFS

Microsoft’s BitLocker allows you to encrypt internal drives and external USB drives. You can even create encrypted container files.​

Business Store and Private Catalog

With Windows 10, businesses can create a private section of the Windows 10 Store for their organization. Users can browse the business’s private catalog and install apps specifically approved by their organization. Businesses can also buy Store apps in bulk and deploy them to their own devices.​

Current Branch for Business

Windows 10 Professional users can put off installing these updates by being on the “Current branch for business,” a more conservative approach to updates. By the time these systems get Windows 10 updates, they will have been beta-tested by millions of Windows 10 Home users. By default, Windows 10 Professional still uses the faster approach to updates.​

Domain Join, Group Policy, and Microsoft Azure Active Directory Join

Generally, these are only features used on business networks, not on your home network. However, the Local Group Policy Editor will remain off-limits to you and you won’t be able to tweak group policy settings on a Home version of Windows 10, just as on previous editions of Windows.​

Enterprise Data Protection

For devices containing both personal data belonging to an employee and work data belonging to an organization, EDP allows businesses to mark specific universal apps as having privileged corporate data and protect it. That data can be separately encrypted and even remotely wiped without affecting the user’s own data. Enterprises can also audit and track the usage of this data.​

Enterprise Mode Internet Explorer

Professional editions of Windows get the “Enterprise Mode” feature in Internet Explorer, which essentially allows you to force Internet Explorer 11 to behave more like Internet Explorer 8. This is only really useful if you’re using ancient websites — usually internal business websites — that don’t work properly in modern browsers.​

Hyper-V

Windows 10 offers a built-in virtual machine solution known as Hyper-V. This was previously a Windows Server feature that made the jump to desktop versions of Windows with Windows 8. Like VirtualBox and VMware, Hyper-V allows you to create and run virtual machines, allowing you to run operating systems in windows on your desktop.​

Remote Desktop

Windows 10 Home offers a client for connecting to Remote Desktop servers, but not the Remote Desktop server itself. To host a Remote Desktop server using Windows 10’s built-in Remote Desktop feature, you’ll need Windows 10 Professional. However, there are many other remote-desktop solutions that don’t require Windows 10 Professional and are easier to set up.​

Windows Update for Business

This is a tool that allows network administrators to better control when Windows Update occurs on devices on their network. They can configure maintenance windows to define exactly when updates should and should not occur — during normal business hours, for example. Peer-to-peer delivery of Windows Updates can occur over a business network between remote offices.​

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I have been considering upgrading from 10 Home to 10 Professional, but needed some extra details before paying Microsoft. Does anyone here use Pro or higher? What extra features do you make use of, and if it's worth upgrading (and why)?

Are the Windows 10 Professional "extra features" worth the price, for a Home user? (ie. I am not a business).

 

[Sven]

In my humble opinion, no, the "extra features" of Pro version is not must-have for a home user. I am currently using Home version and happy with the feature-set. All my daily practices/usage areas are covered by Home version

 

[Deleted member 178]

The only reason i will pay is for the virtualization features and Applocker

 

[illumination]

The only reason i will pay is for the virtualization features and Applocker

I would not just for these two features... Appguard is basically the same thing as applocker, only the policies are set up for you, unlike applocker where you would have to manually input them yourself, and I'm not a fan of hyper-v, would rather run virtualbox.

 

[Malware Man]

I didn't have to pay for anything. I get the Education Edition free from my school and it comes with Office 365 and this has tons more features than the Pro version including Applocker and works wonderfully.

Being a student has it's perks!

Hyper-V is cool and along with Windows to go to have a portable Windows OS and it can help you fix malware and whatnot. Device guard is a amazing new feature of Windows 10 to help block malware providing your hardware supports it and I believe it's not available in Home and Pro versions.

 

[jamescv7]

In such overall basic circumstances then Windows 10 Home is capable enough. Those lacking features can be replace with third party alternatives.

However speaking of business then having a Pro or Enterprise is enough. Since one of the purpose is to harden using the available built in features that can prevent any unauthorized access follow by optimum third party software to increase protection.

The label edition of Windows 10 are clearly enough for your needs.