Professional is more like $200, and has all that crap as home version.

dspillett · on March 28, 2023

The difference between home and pro is very small these days. Hyper-V, BitLocker, and Group Policy, are basically it. You can grab a cheap OEM licence to upgrade Home to Pro very easily for far less than $200.

tremon · on March 29, 2023

Wasn't it also true that the Home version can't connect to regular SMB/CIFS shares? There's a very faint bell ringing in the back of my mind about that.

tsgagnon · on March 29, 2023

Don't forget Remote Desktop.

dspillett · on March 29, 2023

Good shout. That and hyper-v are why I upgraded to pro (on the very cheap) on my main windows machine & laptop.

deely3 · on March 28, 2023

Erm. No? I use it and I don't remember ads that I can't disable (honestly I don't remember ads in windows except in Edge but thats different story), or some tricky interruption on windows load.

Upd: Im about win10.

gtop3 · on March 29, 2023

I have a distinct memory of seeing an advertisement for a windows store game in the start menu of my copy of windows 10 professional in the year 2015. The widows license was $200. I hadn't used windows in years before, and I only used it briefly in 2015.