coolmom42 wrote:
The Microsoft Surface line is MADE by Microsoft and runs Windows 10. I do NOT recommend Pro. It has a lot of features for working on networks, which you will not. Home is fine.
HP & Dell products come with all manner of bloatware that will need to be removed.
No operating system is going to mine your personal data stored on the device. What they are interested in is the function and usage of the operating system and any proprietary apps.
I come from a company that is deeply rooted in building high tech "healthcare" products using PCs which are "embedded" inside the products. Been at that company for 22yrs, have been responsible for well over 100,000 PCs including servers in the field. Unfortunately due to Non Disclosure Agreement, I am not allowed or at liberty to reveal any more details.
This company takes security of potential PHI leaking out that ALL company PCs hard drives are fully encrypted, only the user assigned to that PC is able to log in.. ALL external devices like USB flash drives and hard drives MUST also be fully encrypted, only the user that allowed the drive to be encrypted can access that drive..
Everything you have said is completely wrong when it comes to PROTECTING YOUR INFORMATION.
Surface may be a "creation" of MS, but it doesn't mean your information on it, used by it is 100% secure. Take away the Internet Cloud from it and it becomes pretty much a useless dumb terminal which means most of it's time to be useful it needs that online connection and that connection is not all that secure.
The OP IS talking of having folks SS AND drivers licenses, would YOU like the fact that YOUR SS AND DL information is floating around a UNSECURE PUBLIC INTERNET LOCATION?
I certainly would not.
I guess you are fine by that, may as well save that hackers time and energy and post your information out in the open?
Data breaches are REAL, data breaches happen all the time and when you have your own personally identifying information spread out over hundreds of thousands of servers to which some may or may not be "patched" and "secured" as well as other, wouldn't that make YOU mad?
OP has a responsibility to those that have entrusted him/her with that information to ensure their information does not become just another data breach.
"Pro" has ENHANCEMENTS and FEATURES which actually HELP with security, you gain security with the fact that you get those features built in. Allows you to customize the PC deeper than Home users are allowed. That customization does include some "networking" stuff, but that stuff IS CRITICAL FOR SECURITY REASONS.
You get Regedit, Group policies and much more. With Regedit, you CAN fix things that cannot be fixed in Home versions, you do not have to directly run Regedit, there are many fixit utilities that NEED regedit in order to fix issues in the registry.. No regedit and those fixits can't work.
Group policies can allow you to granularly set specific permissions and user access rights beyond the basic controls given in Home versions.
And by the way, "Pro" LOOKS AND FEELS just like "home" and "Pro" does not impact, change. or restrict any of your computing experience.
And it typically only costs $50 as an upgrade over the factory "Home" version but it unlocks a lot of SECURITY FEATURES.
One real cool feature is "Pro" version you now can access MS Virtual machines. This opens up the world to you by setting up completely sandboxed virtual PCs. If your virtual PC gets hacked, malware, virus, ransomware, you simply can DELETE the damaged VM file and drop a backup VM file back on to the PC and you are back in business..
You can create a separate HOME and Business VM PC files and then you can control what access and how it is accessed..
Can't do that in "home" versions.
"Home" versions have stripped down and dummied the OS to the point it barely functions, it was done this way for several reasons, MS wants the "Home" users to be their first line "guinea pigs" when it comes to updates and features, they get the messed up "updates" FIRST.
"Pro" version allows you to "deffer" updates up to 365 days which allows time for MS to recall and fix their garbage updates. A very important item since MS has a pretty bad history of badly botched updates..
Some of those include complete non booting boot loops, BSOD, how about the one real cool update that REMOVED ALL USB DRIVERS! That one unless you PC had the old PS/2 Keyboard port you could never recover the OS and was forced to reload your PC back from Factory image..
Another great on was the one that blew up the Wifi radio card drivers, you were forced offline with no hope to ever get it back on unless you had a wired Ethernet port or a USB to Ethernet adapter..
Advanced features, sure, but for $50 (Dell upcharges only $50 for the "Pro" version") it is a bargain to gain much more than being restricted to MS Home versions.
I have been exclusively using "PRO" ONLY versions from XP and up and in fact, the PC I am typing this on is XP PRO..
"PRO" IS what you want, Home is not, even for "Home" usage you might find yourself in a better place having a few extra features enabled.
I find I can recover folks PCs easier with "Pro" versions than the more feature restricted "Home" versions since the TOOLS are there..
I no longer will work on folks PCs on the side that have "Home" versions, telling them it is much faster to simply RELOAD the PC from the factory recovery option than it is to try to pick out the problems with no TOOLS.
And a final word to the OP, no matter what version you pick, BACK THE THING UP!
Make BACKUP IMAGES of the PC, BACK IT UP REGULARLY.
Macrium Reflect has a free version of their imaging software, external HDs are cheap (1 TB drives run about $50).. There are also some other free imaging software out there that work well.
Backups are your only defense and hope when MS laubs a bomb update that blows up your PC, be prepared before it happens.
I would recommend
TENFORUMS for all things Windows 10..
