WIN 10 Education vs Education Pro

[samaco]

My friend is a head teacher for a local school. He has a free MS 365 from Microsoft.

He wants to format the 10 computers they have since the windows version is too old 1909. Some of those computers has WIN 10 Education and the rest has WIN 10 Pro.

I would like to know if WIN 10 Education can join to the domain and if WIN 10 Eudcation is free of charge for educational sector.

 

Thank you

[snagrat]

It can join a domain but it is not free.

 

You would typically get Education as part of a Microsoft OVS agreement or some machines will come with a Pro Education license from OEM

[tmoon-mint]

Windows 10 Education is more or less identical to Enterprise. You get access to it via an OVS agreement. It is not free. As long as the devices in question are not running LTSC 1909 can be upgraded to the latest 21H2 without issue.

[Katy]

Also if you have M365 A3 or A5 licence, when you log into a Win 10/11 Pro (or Edu Pro) machine it will automatically uplift to the Education SKU (similarly E3/E5 uplifts to Enterprise SKU). Although if you have the "free" one it's probably A1 which doesn't have this ability.

 

Education SKU is basically the same as Enterprise

Edu Pro is basically the same as Pro

 

So Education has more features than Pro, all of the SKUs mentioned here can join a domain - it's just Home (maybe one of the specialist ones like IoT too, not sure) which can't.

[RLR]

Just to echo what Katy has said as it's caught me out before. The names can be confusing if you're looking to extract a specific WIM version from the ISO.

 

Windows 10 Education = Enterprise

Windows 10 Education Pro = Pro

 

The pro version does not support saving Bitlocker recovery key to AD if you Bitlocker your machines.