Windows 11 Pro and Windows 11 Home are the two main editions for consumer PCs of Microsoft’s latest operating system. Although the company also offers variants for the education sector or the one intended for professional workstations, it has been simplifying the number of versions with each release. But which is the best option for each type of use?
The upgrade to Windows 11 for Windows 10 computers that exceed the minimum requirements. is free of charge and is performed on the same edition of Windows 10 previously installed. That is, Windows 11 Pro can only be upgraded (for free) to Pro and the Home version to its equivalent version. But it may be the case that you want to upgrade from Home to Pro, you have computers without valid licenses that you want to upgrade or you buy new PCs without operating system.
For these cases, Microsoft offers licenses of Windows 10 Home or Pro (upgradeable to Windows 11) for an official price of. $139 and $199respectively, while the upgrade from Home to Pro, which can be done through an option in the Microsoft Store, is even more expensive in relative terms: $99.
Of course, there are other types of licenses that can be used legally and that are much cheapersuch as those of Supercdk that we have been offering you previous weeks and that allow for only 12 euros to buy a Windows 10 license and from there upgrade to Windows 11 if you decide to do so.
Windows versions
Microsoft has offered different editions of Windows for some time now. The reason is quite simple. While a single operating system without additional versions is feasible, not all users need all the features it can contain and not all computers support all features. In addition, the consumer market must be differentiated from the professional and business market, because they do not have the same needs.
Thus, offering several versions is ideal … without going overboard.. Windows XP was sold with two main versions (Home Edition and Professional) and from there the rest branched out. Windows Vista and then Windows 7 complicated the scenario by introducing quite a few more versions: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Enterprise, Business and Ultimate, with a different feature set between them all.
Fortunately, Windows 10 and Windows 11 have brought things back to normal, and while there are workstation, education and enterprise specific versions, and special editions such as SE are not ruled out, Home and Pro are the only two editions that most consumers should be aware of.
Windows 11 Pro vs. Pro
Windows 11 Home is the default version that is shipped pre-installed. on most new computers, while the Pro version contains a handful of additional features and is generally preinstalled on high-end personal computers or those intended for enterprise client machines. Microsoft provides a dedicated web page comparing features between versions.
It has to be said that Windows 11 Home is sufficient for the vast majority of consumers since. is the most complete base version of those released by Microsoft in recent times.with all the expected features including Windows Hello, secure boot, Windows security, parental controls, device encryption and many others.
Even other features are available that in earlier versions of Windows were only offered by default in higher versions such as the Linux subsystem for Windows and in the future the other subsystem Microsoft is working on, the Android subsystem which will also be available in the Home version.
Windows 11 Pro, more complete, but necessary for consumption?
The ‘Pro’ version includes all the features of Home while adding additional features, primarily for professional environments. One of the most notable is BitLocker, a security feature that “encrypts” or “scrambles” data on a computer. Other relevant ones are WIP, which helps protect enterprise applications and data against accidental data leakage, and the rest have to do with enterprise administration and management such as Hyper-V hypervisor, Windows Sandbox or full support for Windows Remote Desktop.
There are other differences that Microsoft’s site does not cite that may be important to some users, such as Windows 10 Home no longer supports local accounts on installation (as is possible with Windows 10 Home) and requires you to link a Microsoft ID account to the system, while the Pro version can use local accounts from the same installation. One and the other can work with both once installed.
There are also some differences with respect to hardware. Both have the same minimum hardware requirements (4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage, a dual-core CPU, TPM 2.0, secure boot, or a DirectX 12-compatible GPU), but Windows 11 Home only supports up to 64 CPU cores and 128 GB of RAM. It also doesn’t support dual-CPU systems, although that’s not really something that’s used in the consumer market.
Which one should you use?
Windows 11 Home is the version to choose for an ordinary user. It includes all the expected functions, applications and games will run the same as in the Pro version, it is much cheaper and another important point thinking about resource consumption: it will not load business modules that you probably do not need.
As for BitLocker, it is interesting, but there are a dozen alternatives to use in Home and the same we can say about the Hyper-V hypervisor or the remote desktop client: there are third-party applications that can be used. It all depends on your specific needs and use cases, but the base edition of Windows 11 (less basic than in previous systems) is sufficient for the vast majority of users.
