Читать книгу Windows 10 All-in-One For Dummies - Ciprian Adrian Rusen, Woody Leonhard - Страница 72

Windows 10 appears in six different major editions, uncounted numbers of minor editions, and three of the major editions are available in 32-bit and 64-bit incarnations. That makes nine different editions of Windows to choose from. Not counting the kinda-sorta Windows 10 editions for ARM chips (such as Qualcomm’s), phones (Mobile), Xbox, HoloLens, refrigerators, and bumper cars.

Fortunately, most people need to concern themselves with only two editions, and you can probably quickly winnow the list to one. Contemplating the 32-bit conundrum may exercise a few extra gray cells, but with a little help, you can probably figure it out easily.

In a nutshell, the four Windows 10 editions (and targeted customer bases) look like this:

  Windows 10 Home (initially named Windows 10) — the version you probably want — works great unless you specifically need one of the features in Windows 10 Pro. A big bonus for many of you: This version makes all the myriad Windows languages — 96 of them, from Afrikaans to Yoruba — available to anyone with a normal, everyday copy of Windows, at no extra cost. Its biggest downside is that it allows you to postpone updates only up to 35 days.

 Windows 10 Pro includes everything in Windows 10 Home plus the capability to attach the computer to a corporate domain network; the Encrypting File System and BitLocker (see the “Encrypting File System and BitLocker” sidebar later in this chapter) for scrambling your hard drive’s data; Hyper-V for running virtual machines; and the software necessary for your computer to act as a Remote Desktop host — the “puppet” in an RD session. A big plus is that it allows users to postpone updates up to a year.

 Windows 10 Enterprise is available only to companies that buy into Microsoft’s Volume License program — the (expensive) volume licensing plan that buys licenses to every modern Windows version. Enterprise offers a handful of additional features, but they don’t matter unless you’re going to buy a handful of licenses or more.

 Windows 10 Education looks just like Windows 10 Enterprise, but it’s available only to schools, through a program called Academic Volume Licensing.

Those four editions run only on Intel and AMD processors. They’re traditional Windows.

You’ll hear increasingly about Windows 10 editions designed for ARM chips — computer chips originally designed for smartphones. In theory, those editions will work exactly the same way as their Intel/AMD brethren but can’t run desktop apps unless they are emulated.

In addition, just to make your life more complicated, many of these editions of Windows can run in S mode. Microsoft’s peddling S mode as an alternative to Chromebooks — stripped-down, fast starting, battery friendly, and somewhat impervious to infection.