Hope You Weren’t Expecting A Single Version Of Windows 10

Hope You Weren’t Expecting A Single Version Of Windows 10

Microsoft announced Windows 10 as one big, free operating system that ran on everything: tablets, phones, PCs, televisions, game consoles and more. The fine print betrayed that marketing line though: it would only be a free upgrade for non-enterprise customers, which meant there would still be Home, Pro and Enterprise versions of Windows 10. Now it’s official.

A new Windows blog post runs down the status quo: Windows 10 will come in Home, Pro, Mobile, Enterprise and Education flavours, each packaging in specific features and tweaks to fit the market — mostly just adding some cloud features for Windows Pro and selling Enterprise with volume licensing. Microsoft will also be selling scaled down version of Windows 10 for ATMs, point of sale machines and Internet Of Things devices. Par for the course.

So what’s different? Windows 10 Mobile. Why does that matter? Because Microsoft spent years trying to rebrand its portable OS as “Windows Phone”, distancing itself from the disaster that was its original mobile phone operating system. Now the name is back. Weird.

So yes, there are still multiple versions of Windows. Does that mean Microsoft’s promise of a big, happy, unified platform is going to fall flat? Probably not, but we’re still looking forward to finding out. Check out Microsoft’s official fun-down of Windows Editions right here. [Microsoft]


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