Windows 10 Version Madness
One of the things I can still easily gripe about from Microsoft it would seem is their product marketing and licensing strategy. With the way things were going with Windows 8 and the free licenses for OEM's on certain devices and free upgrades I really hoped that Windows 10 would be the version to kill off their silly product editions.
This list is nonsensical.
Paul Thurrot argued that Windows 10 Home and Pro could be merged to just Windows 10... but I would go further than that and say that Enterprise and Education SKU's should be in that boat as well. The only difference I would expect is that a traditional Enterprise or Education user would get their activation in a different fashion than a typical consumer would. And I would expect Enterprise features to be enabled/enforced by virtue of joining the computer to a corporate domain.
I actually did once see a reason to separate out Home and Pro. There are some feature differences that in an earlier age you could sensibly charge more for. These days, that isn't the case. The extra feature set hasn't really kept the pace though, and now most of those differentiators are trivial where they once were novel.
Mobile and Enterprise Mobile editions obviously also make no sense. There was only 1 Windows Phone OS to begin with and now there are 2. I would expect that since Mobile now shares most of the same code from the desktop OS that these coincide with the Home and Enterprise versions of the desktop editions accordingly. But on mobile this is even more baffling. If I want to join my existing phone to the domain and get the same benefits I know need a different edition. And how in the hell do I get a new licensed edition of Windows on my phone? I'm sure MS will have an answer to this. But I doubt it will be pretty.
This list is nonsensical.
Paul Thurrot argued that Windows 10 Home and Pro could be merged to just Windows 10... but I would go further than that and say that Enterprise and Education SKU's should be in that boat as well. The only difference I would expect is that a traditional Enterprise or Education user would get their activation in a different fashion than a typical consumer would. And I would expect Enterprise features to be enabled/enforced by virtue of joining the computer to a corporate domain.
I actually did once see a reason to separate out Home and Pro. There are some feature differences that in an earlier age you could sensibly charge more for. These days, that isn't the case. The extra feature set hasn't really kept the pace though, and now most of those differentiators are trivial where they once were novel.
Mobile and Enterprise Mobile editions obviously also make no sense. There was only 1 Windows Phone OS to begin with and now there are 2. I would expect that since Mobile now shares most of the same code from the desktop OS that these coincide with the Home and Enterprise versions of the desktop editions accordingly. But on mobile this is even more baffling. If I want to join my existing phone to the domain and get the same benefits I know need a different edition. And how in the hell do I get a new licensed edition of Windows on my phone? I'm sure MS will have an answer to this. But I doubt it will be pretty.
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