Surface Laptop Owners Can Still Upgrade From Windows 10 S to Windows 10 Pro for Free
Microsoft Surface Laptop owners released in June have a little more time to upgrade from the included Windows 10 S to the fully functional Windows 10 Pro operating system.
The message in the blog on this week, Microsoft announced a three-month extension of the program upgrade from Windows 10 S, which originally was to be completed in late 2017. The new update deadline, March 31, 2018, gives owners of surprisingly stable laptops a little more time to decide which version of Windows 10 they want to use, be it the teacher-friendly Windows 10 S or the more powerful Windows 10 Pro.
If your current hesitation ends up missing the extended deadline, you can always shell out $ 49 for an upgrade license, but you should probably make a decision before that. The upgrade is simple enough and you can go back to Windows 10 S if you don’t like the Pro version.
Windows 10 S is essentially a stripped-down version of the traditional Windows 10 Pro operating system designed for low-end devices. It is designed with efficiency in mind and provides increased safety for use in schools and offices. It also allows other manufacturers (like HP with its ProBook x360 ) to make cheaper Windows 10 devices to compete with the growing number of Chromebooks used in schools. Unfortunately, even with access to the Microsoft App Store, it is rather limited.
Windows 10 S forces you to use the Microsoft Edge browser and the Bing search engine, and neither can be changed (of course, you can just make Google your home page if you’re desperate enough). Since it cannot run traditional Windows apps, but only apps that can be found in the Windows Store, your choice of apps is severely limited. Full-featured programs like Adobe Creative Suite apps or third-party web browsers like Google Chrome are mostly unsuitable.
Upgrading to Windows 10 Pro gives users the ability to run traditional Windows apps like they would on a regular PC, but you miss out on enhanced protection against malware and other viruses with the App Sandboxing feature in Windows 10 S.
Windows 10 Pro also uses more power than the more optimized Windows 10 S. You get access to Microsoft’s BitLocker file encryption feature, as well as the ability to use Remote Desktop Connection, which lets you control your Windows 10 Pro PC from a different location. … … In short, the update gives you a lot of benefits at the expense of battery life and slightly slower downloads.
The $ 1,000 Microsoft Surface Laptop is the leader among Windows 10 S laptops, akin to Google’s $ 1,299 Chromebook Pixel. If you’ve spent a ton of money on a laptop, you should probably do yourself a favor and upgrade your operating system so you don’t end up in a stream without a paddle, so to speak.