Lets say Id had 100 computers. Lets say Im not yet sure if I want to be from the "educational sector" or "tech industry". The options would be to purchase 100x Windows : 1.) -Windows 10 Pro Retail (this can be reused a lot, but has a "countdown" attached?) -Windows 10 Pro Volume Licensing (this can be reused, if "deactivated" properly before ?) -Windows 10 Education (its just like volume lincensing, right ?) -Windows 10 Pro Education (I wasnt aware this even exists, but that you can turn Eduocation version into it) There also was : -Windows 10 Pro OEM "National Academic“ or „Shape the Future“ which turned into Windows 10 Pro Education with version 1607 automatically. If I understood right, you got this version with special hardware (pc's, laptops) attached to it. 2.) But how would one identify this special version "Shape the Future" on a PC, with a build earlier than 1607 ? Or was this really just a "discount"...and how does that version know it has to turn into Education one day ? (I bet its some registry entries) 3.) So far I understood, purchasing "Win 10 Education" for a school/librabry could be the cheapest option, but you need to be part of some "microsoft program" of course. And it would be automatically volume lincesing ? 4.) Regarding "Reusing" these 100 licenses. Which one would be "less work", for example installing it on 100 new PCs ? 5.) If I would be a school, rougly, what would have been the cheapest variant ? 6.) If I would be a tech company, roughly, what would have been the cheapest variant ? 7.) Are there any "common" official price tables available to the public ? Instead of phoning various resellers or starting the microsoft program for education ? Regards (still googling)
Education is by far the cheapest (often..0$) since it's government-funded at least partially. My university had a 3-way partnership that gave it for free, with the whole office suite. Plus a customized 10 server. Hardware was also all win logo - everything under discount. Most students requesting it have received a key for use at home as well (uni added an artificial requirement to be a full-time student). My local high-school also got it officially, just one classroom with few dozen PC's bought via government-issued vouchers but without OS. Only had to prove it's an official school in my country (I guess depends on the country). No free office tough, as that required a subscription and more talks with regional ms dept that the school board did not want to get into. It came as retail-like keys, as there was no it department, no server infrastructure, and not all PCs networked. And pay-for support. Few keys got leaked several times by students until getting blocked, but ms replenished them without much hassle. The education media with either vl or retail key will upgrade anything 7 / 8 / 10, there's no special identification going on any more, but I do remember a library pc with a windows 8 for education coa sticker. I don't think there's a common pricing, it's tailored per region, per country, and depending on volume, per customer. In any case, your premise is false. You are either representing an academic institution, or you don't. Might as well KMS38™ and be done with it. As for a company, there is not much discount for just 100 naked OS licenses.
Thank you for the reply. So, for example : If the PCs at a school have a "Windows for Education" sticker on the back, but have a "Windows 10 Pro" installed...it means the school purchased "Windows 10 Education incl. Computers" (probably for a discount) but additionally someone sold Windows 10 Pro to the school and installed it ? (either retail or volume licensed) And why would someone do that ?
I've seen it plenty. Usually - a snob director or secretary that felt the Education label was too demeaning for their position and requested a Pro edition, despite technically being a downgrade. Also MS inconsistencies, as in 8 they had Pro for Education. Now it's back, and is still technically a downgrade. And then there's students escaping the domain-setup for Education by installing a standalone Pro (to play games and cheat tests )
A lot of times directors and secretarys have absolutley no idea about differences between "Education" & "Pro"...hence my bet would be on a reseller, or the schools external IT support, that made some pretty penny by selling additional Pro volume licenses to the school ?
Yes it can also be a sign of corruption - it's a worldwide sport to divert your budget (moreso if it's a public school) to unnecessary / fictive IT purchases from a shell company tied to yourself or your family/friends. To be fair, MS still retains a wide corrupt network that keeps the government bribes going. And as long as big money flows, they don't care about the small fish.
Sorry for hijacking this thread, but I'm just a bit confused whether to go with Education or Pro Education and came across this thread I've read comments saying that on Pro edu you can't go below telemetry level 1, however I set mine to 0 just fine couple minutes ago ( Am a newbie and didn't know I could do that ) Why do you mention it is a downgrade? I thought pro was the go to version and ended up downloading it, but if just standard education without pro is better, I don't mind fresh installing again Regarding your "must-have privacy policies for w10" I didn't quite understand this warning TO DISABLE A POLICY, UNCOMMENT THE REG DELETE ENTRY BELOW IT For example here, I couldn't get it to work, I removed the whole 3rd line, tried removing just the "::" and "::reg delete" it didnt change anything on "allow telemetry option" however manually I was able to set it to 0. %@% 0. Telemetry - Security level is only supported on Education and Enterprise [best editions privacy-wise] reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection" /f /v AllowTelemetry /d 0 /t reg_dword ::reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection" /f /v AllowTelemetry
Pro Education is just Pro with education policies applied, without any enterprise features that makes actual Education edition so great. So when you set security to 0 on Pro Education, it's just cosmetic, Windows ignores the policy. Windows ignores lots of policies. Like mentioned above, it was made to attract snobs that otherwise would keep on installing vanilla Pro on academia computers. Goes to show that Microsoft acknowledged that vanilla Pro is not safe enough in academia environment. Note that setting policies by hand via gpedit.msc is the preferred way, as in some cases registry-based settings can lead to mixed results. As for the unclear usage of that script, it stems from how all policies are set on windows: - it makes little sense to have a policy configured if you're just gonna use the default value - once you adjust a policy, be it Enabled or Disabled, the policy state is switched to that - to remove your adjustments and restore default state, you must select Not configured value - the equivalent of selecting Not configured for registry-based adjustments is to reg delete it. Guess I should have used unconfigured or similar wording Now that 20H2 is official, I will review available policies and update that script with support for writing policies directly, not just their reg equivalents.