various Windows operating systems- what's the difference ?
 

Hey guys so I'm searching for a new laptop computer trying to take advantage of Amazon/Walmart specials . I see various descriptions of the Windows operating system as listed below . What are the differences good or bad for the average laptop user ?

1.Windows 10
2.Windows 10 S
3.Windows Home
4.Windows Pro

I am currently using an old Toshiba Satellite that originally had Windows 7 but has since been updated to Windows 10 . I don't use many of the Windows office features and use Google Chrome as my search engine and daily use . Thanks in advance

If you don't use the office suite, why are you going with a windows based device?? If my business software would run on Chrome OS, I'd switch in a hot second.

Cab that is a valid question and my answer is because that's what I am used to . Probably not a GOOD reason but I am a creature of habit :D . I have looked at Chromebooks and what has me puzzled about them is they seem to have small amounts of memory and HD space . But maybe it's not needed ? And I like a larger screen in the arena of 15 " to 17 " the Chromebooks seem to be smaller than that .

I should clarify I use a laptop with 99 % of my usage being checking emails and searching the web so I really don't need the full capability of a laptop . I guess I may fall into the category of an old dog trying to learn a new trick ;) with a Chromebook or other device . I'm open to hear suggestions on devices .

Yeah they store everything on the cloud which can be a bit foreign for someone that's accustomed to everything being stored on the HD. Acer has a 15.6 display in a chromebook. I don't know why they tend to stay on the smaller screen size than the Windows based systems do. Probably trying to focus on chipping away at the Apple market.

When my ex needed a new laptop I pointed her to an Acer 15.6. Around $200 and it is perfect for surfing the web. Boots instantly and does everything she needs. If I needed a new one I think that would be my choice.

If you already have a google account, I think cloud storage is pretty seamless. I'd have to ask my son since I don't use the chromebook though.

If you don't mind Google knowing every single thing you do on your computer, Chrome and cloud storage is great. I prefer to own my own photos and not just give everything to Google.

I use software that will only run on Win 10 Pro and above, so I have to use it. The lesser versions don't have the ability to access a lot of RAM and several other restrictions that 90% or more of the users don't need.

Personally I HATE cloud computing. I prefer to store my files on my equipment and not on someone else's computer. Just remember, Apple, Microsoft, the FBI and even the CIA have been hacked. Dozens if not hundreds of banks and other business have been hacked.

It all comes down to what fits your computing needs. My wife is 100% happy with just her iPad and my Apple print ready printer. She on occasion uses my Win 10 Pro laptop but that is rare.

I spend all day on my Win 10 pro system in a tower with a lot of processing power no laptop can touch. But I run a business and it is churning on a project right now, as I surf the web.

I guess I am a bit old fashioned but I don't really trust "the cloud" since I have NO idea where my files are, who sees them and how easily can I get them. Of course with "the cloud" you have to be connected to the internet or nothing can happen and there may be times when no network is available or I am in a shaky area or, or. So I tend to buy my PC for home use so I can disconnect if I want and the same with the last laptop I bought. I generally buy the "Pro" version of the operating system if it is Windows since Windows 10 works well at 64 bit version and make sure to get the most memory and fastest video system and if you get the laptop buy a 30 or 40 inch flat screen TV and run the computer via HDMI cable. It is much easier to see things with a big screen and they are cheap now. I would suggest a Logitech mouse with is much easier than the touch pad to work with.

Chrome OS is a lightweight cloud based OS. I want a full OS that would function just fine even if I lost access to the cloud for a month. On top of that, while every big IT corp is working the big data angle, I do believe the Google and Facebook probably do it better than the rest (which is good for them and bad for the rest of us.
exactly
cloud may be OK for certain things, or nice to have as a backup, but I prefer to have my stuff, not be borrowing it from someone else.

Exactly. I want the PC to work whether it's got connectivity or not. I want to have my files. Being able to backup to the cloud may be OK, but that's a backup, not the primary.

I suspect that everything is 64-bit in Win 10, whether it's pro or home.

They do come with 32gb of eMMC so you can store some pics. If you have a lot, you can buy a lot of external storage pretty reasonably. But who want to plug in external devices each time they want to look at pics? If you don't need a lot of storage, programs seem to be my greatest usage with pics coming in second, a chromebook isn't a bad way to go.

With all the junk on a Windows machine, I have no reason to believe Microsoft doesn't know as much about me as Google does.

The other nice thing about a Chromebook is you don't have to worry about updates screwing up your system and slowing it down.

Thanks for the feedback so far , I am not sure I'm a cloud guy either :confused: . I do like what I am reading about Chromebooks like the almost instant boot up time . I will continue to search and get smart :D

I personally love running Linux. I get local storage and control, it runs very fast on old hardware, and I can use things like Libre Office (though I will say it doesn't have the options for printing that MS Office does).

To answer your actual question...
Windows 10 is either Home or Pro (or very rarely something like Enterprise)

Stay away from 10 S. Don't get 10 S. S is for "secure" but it really means "screw you", it's very difficult to load any software on it unless it's part of Microsoft's very small "secure" selection. It's designed to be given to kids so they can't fill it with porn and video games.

Windows 10 Home is fine for 99% of us, you won't notice the difference. The only time I do is when something weird goes wrong, and Home has disabled the backdoor features that let you fix it. Pro has those features. Like, recently on my laptop, something got misconfigured and now I need to ctrl-alt-del to log in. There's a way to fix that in Pro, but not in Home. So, I'm tolerating it.

Get a computer with a SSD hard drive, and it will boot up fast enough. Slower than Chrome, but much faster than you've ever seen a computer boot up. Also, unless you need to, why shutdown? I sleep my desktop and laptop, both run for weeks or months at a time like that, and they wake up in 5 seconds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_editions

What sort of activity is your PC churning on?

enormous image file manipulation.

His Workstation has, IIRC, terabytes of RAM, and crazy hard drive space via a couple few HDD and also more HDD in a RAID setup.

We do Aerial photography and mapping. It is churning on a project for an city in Oklahoma producing 3 inch resolution photomosaic of images we took from our Cessna 182T.

It will be a 17.5 GB Tif file as the first step of many other steps to produce a final image we send to the surveyor for him to put his stamp on it and mark up the invoice to sell to the city.

I have 256 Gig of Ram, 16 core i9 CPU, two high end video cards, two 2TB M.2 drives and a 15 TB RAID 5 all in the box.

If they advertise "Windows 10" they mean Windows 10 Home.

The difference between the two is the additional features, as discussed above. In addition, you have access to more, of not all, of the Office Suite products. Pro gets you access to PowerPoint and, I think, Excel, and maybe a few other business-oriented features. If Microsoft Office isn't important to you, then I don't see any need to get the Pro edition.

I thought you had more RAM than that. I must have been thinking about the HDD.