Upgrading Windows 10 Home to Pro

I purchased a HP Laptop that's part of the Microsoft 3rd Party Refurbisher Program.

It comes with a Microsoft Windows 10 Home product key affixed indicating that it is part of the Microsoft 3rd Party Refurbisher Program.



I'm trying to figure out my options to upgrade from a Windows 10 Home to a Pro edition?

I assume I first would need a retail Windows 10 Pro COA in order to change from Home to Pro?

I currently have Windows 10 Pro edition installed on a desktop Lenovo PC that's a retail version. I also purchased back when they first arrived on the market a new / unused Windows 8.x upgrade that's been sitting around unused since first purchased.

So my best option if I were to upgrade the HP laptop from Home to Pro would be to spend $$$ for a new Windows 10 Pro?

There really isn't much difference between Windows 10 Home and Pro so I'm thinking of just keeping the Home version installed on the HP laptop. ??? Currently the Windows 10 Home version has the ver. 1903 upgrade installed. So I'm uncertain what unusable features a Pro version would have over the Home version

There is a command that you can run to see a list of upgrade options.

Open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste:

dism /online /get-targeteditions

albert1 said:

...There really isn't much difference between Windows 10 Home and Pro ... I'm uncertain what unusable features a Pro version would have over the Home version

In terms of control over updates, the gap between Home and Pro has narrowed considerably with 1903.

Both can pause updates for up to 35 days. Feature updates are now optional, shown as available but with a 'download and install now' link you can choose to ignore for (nearly) as long as you want. A Feature Update will only start to download automatically when your current version is within a few months of end of support. The additional controls Pro offers are to defer cumulative updates by up to 30 days, and defer feature updates by up to 365 days.

Group policy editor is only available in Pro, but many of the policies will also work in Home. Where this is the case the TenForums tutorials will have both instructions for using gpedit for Pro users, and a .reg file for Home users to apply the same registry changes.

I have machines with both Home and Pro and for most things theres nothing to choose between them. The main use I have for Pro is Hyper-V so that I can run virtual machines, but even that can be done in Home with third-party tools like VMWare.

dism /online /get-targeteditions command produced

Target Editions

CoreSingleLanguage
Professional
ProfessionalEducation
ProfessionalWorkstation
Education
ProfessionalCountrySpecific
ProfessionalSingleLanguage
ServerRdsh
IoTEnterprise
Enterprise


I think I'm going to leave the Windows 10 Home OS alone for now as MS store currently is selling the Pro version (download & USB) for $199.99 The Home version is $139.00.

There are a few unopened new DVD copies of the Pro retail versions on eBay for under a $100.00, but at this point having a Pro version isn't that important.

I looked at some of the Chromebooks but also need to run some of my Windows Applications (such as GPS mapping, etc.) I read somewhere that Microsoft opened up the licensing for Windows 10 OS so the cost for a laptop manufacture became to produce this sort of laptop became less when Installed on at least some of the Windows laptops that compete with Chromebook. From what I can remember lowering the price for competition purposes as the price of Chromebooks designed mainly for web surfing and e-mail started to become much lower than similar laptops with Windows 10 installed.

Chome OS (Chromium) an open source OS I think is based on Linux? From what I understand is built on top of a Linux kernel and doesn't require the same system resources as a Windows 10 laptop being sold for mainly web surfing and e-mail.

Walmart has quite a few laptops usually with a Celeron cpu and 4GB, some are Chromebooks while others have Windows 10 installed.

The problem with the Walmart in our area is one could not test out any of the laptops due to the local Walmart decided to lock all their laptops because a few people were loading porn onto them. So the admin decided to lock the OS of all their laptops so one isn't able to try them out prior to purchasing.

My HP Probook has an Intel cpu with 8GB main memory and 120GB SSD drive. I found to run at least some Windows Apps may require at leas 8GB main memory and an Intel cpu i3 - i7, etc. ( not a celeron)

The price of laptops has significantly fallen with the introduction of a whole new market of less powerful laptops designed primarily for web surfing and e-mail. A bit more powerful than other types of mobile devices such as cell phones, etc. but not as powerful as an actual laptop with later Intel cpus and more memory, that I can remember from the past typically costing from around $1000.00 to over $3,000.00.

You can't upgrade using the cheaper Pro OEM product keys which is what the DVD package is. That is only good for a clean install.

I would recommend you shrink your current Windows 10 partition by 64GB and create a partition in the empty space. Do a clean install of Windows 10 Pro to the new partition. Then use your Windows 8 Pro product key to activate it.

Try using your spare Pro key to upgrade from Settings / Change Product Key. The Pro files are already present and no complicated installation is required. You might also be able to find a cheap Pro upgrade key.

I have both home and Pro versions. As Bree mentioned, the main difference is Group policies (that I don't use).

So the question is: What feature you're going to use on Pro that worth the price you're going to pay for it?

I think for now will leave it as a "Home" version. If something comes up where I need Bitlocker or other features then I will try to convert it to a Pro version. The HP Probook is mainly used when not at home with my Lenovo Desktop. I've been upgrading PC's since the early 1980s when I first started using a dumb terminal then later a XT PC connected to a Vax mainframe. I'm uncertain how much I've spent in 35+ years on hardware and software .. early 8-bit PCs, (CP/M and Dos) which I've owned use to sell for new for around ~$1500.00 and $3,000.00+. I can remember a 5MB hard drive costing ~$1500.00.

Anyway currently I'm trying to install Outlook from Office 2016 on the HP Windows 10 laptop but having problems trying to get it to install from a exe file with COA downloaded from Microsoft. I can remember computing with the Microsoft people many years ago when MS was worth around ~$50,000.00 They use to use the same computing lab I was using back then along with a mainframe.

I don't know what happened to all of e-mail clients. I've tried many but prefer MS Outlook over the others which I've used since it first came out. So I'm installing MS Office mainly to be able to use Outlook as a mail client.

But something went wrong with the installation due to a poor Hughes-net internet connection at my location. I was finally able to download MS Office but currently unable to get it to install So perhaps I'll need to perform a fresh Windows 10 "Home" installation?