I recently purchased a couple of Surface Laptops, that run Windows 10S. I went to install a couple of my Office 365 Pro Plus licenses on them. Now I’m wondering what that S stands for (apart from ‘Security’), after coming up against these three immutable laws:
- If you’ve got Windows 10S, you can only install apps from the Office Store. Okay…
- If you’ve got an Office 365 Pro Plus subscription, you can install Office 365 Pro Plus on up to 5 devices that are “compatible with Windows 7 or later”. Yipee!
- Office 365 Pro Plus is not available via the Office Store. What the!
Well that’s just plain Windows 10Stupid. Can someone from the Windows Store team explain that to someone from the Office Marketing team, so they can add “…unless you have Windows 10S” to their Office 365 Pro Plus copy, please?
Note that you can ‘upgrade’ your Windows 10S devices to a non 10S version that lets your kids download viruses unassisted. But unless you’re willing to open that Pandora’s Box, Microsoft effectively stymie you from installing their own software on their own operating system. Nuts. Absolute nuts.
Ah well. In other Office 365 world news:
- Office 365 subscribers will shortly be able to import and use PowerBI Custom Visuals. Just like I suggested right here last year.
- Office 365 subscribers will shortly get PowerPivot no matter what O365 plan they are on.
That is, unless they have Windows 10S and an Office 365 Pro Plus subscription, it seems.
Yup. totally insane. It is probably why MS allows you to switch from S mode to Pro mode for free. Because no one would ever use S mode daily.
Damn: It seem that you can switch some Surface Laptops but not others. On my i7 I type “Switch out of S mode” in the Windows Store search mode, and get an option to do just that, for free. On my daughter’s i5 I type that same search and get nothing. Nor is there any way to even install a *paid* version of Windows Pro. This just pain sucks.
If you try and download some software from the web, you get some message saying you can’t do that, but with a link saying something like “Still want to install software from outside the store? Click here”. But click on that link, and you get taken to the store, which then displays a message along the lines of “Couldn’t load page”.
I’ve seen a few threads from other folk in the exact same boat, and one thread saying that the switch is only possible on the more expensive Surface Laptop SKUs (but not going into specifics).
On Microsoft’s site, they say:
You can switch out of S mode easily at any time through the Microsoft Store within Windows. There is no charge for switching the mode. The switch is one-way; if you make the switch, you won’t be able to go back to S mode. See below for important additional limitations when switching out of S mode on devices that use the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
To learn more or switch out of S mode, go to the Microsoft Store within Windows and search for “switch out of S mode”.
…but obviously Microsoft don’t actually own any of their own computers.
@Jeff Weir
Windows 10S IS NOT Windows 10. It is a VERY stripped down version of windows 10, mostly to make it boot faster and load faster. It is meant to be similar to 8.1 in that it is designed to be an OS used only on palm/netbook devices that normally use browser based applications rather than desktop (local) applications.
Much of what was stripped to make it faster is related to the running of these desktop applications. Hence, to run them you need to “revert” (lul) to the normal Windows 10 operating system, which then you will likely lose the speed enhancements and if you arent using a new Surface Pro it will almost certainly be much slower on the “netbook” like hardware.
S Mode is simple…. its a point of sale thing. People who are buying netbooks want speed… Windows 10 isnt speedy. So they had to alter it to align it to what other competitors are offering in the netbook market. However, it improperly (my opinion) makes it seem by calling it Windows 10S that you can load anything on it that you can load on Windows 10 (note this was the entire reason behind Windows using 8.1 rather than Win7S originally, seems its more marketable to mislead your customers when they buy it, then provide them a free way to get the apps they want but lose the performance they paid for.)