Microsoft doesn’t seem to be satisfied with the number of Windows 10 offerings already available to the consumers and is planning to release a set of three new and upcoming Windows SKUs.
This development comes to light, courtesy of the internal preview builds that were accidentally released to both mobile, as well as PC users, earlier last week. Microsoft has already apologized for the sudden mishap, which drove several mobile devices down the bricked road while the PC build was only unstable — it did not lead to many blue screens of death. It has, however, surely shone a light on new feature upgrades (like the WordFlow keyboard for PCs & tablets) and the said info about new Windows 10 versions.
By diving deeper into the internal structure of the leaked internal builds, we are steadily discovering more info of what Microsoft is presently working on. The new Windows SKUs were initially spotted within the preview build 16212 by Twitter user AndItsTito and was tweeted out to the well-known user — Walking Cat.
The three new versions of Windows 10, as seen in the screenshot attached below, are Windows 10 Pro for Advanced PCs, Windows 10 Pro N for Advanced PCs and Windows Server 2016 ServerRdsh. There is not much information available about each of the new SKUs but some speculations have already popped up on the interwebs.
@h0x0d @bdsams 3 new SKUs in the leaked 16212 pkeyconfig (ServerRdsh can be upgraded to Education!) ? pic.twitter.com/UyBf58XINT
— Lakshmi ‘Tito’ Ullu (@AndItsTito) June 4, 2017
It is currently being suggested that Windows 10 Pro for Advanced PCs is a renamed variant of Windows 10 Pro for Workstations. It is expected to have licensing and optimisations targetted towards systems with powerful multi-core, RAM-intensive, and petabytes of onboard storage. More info about the same can be found in the tweet attached below.
Here is some more info: pic.twitter.com/hL46sQjKeg
— TheGrandMofongo (@GrandMofongo) June 5, 2017
The Windows 10 Pro N for Advanced PCs will most likely be the moniker for the operating system powering ‘Always Connected’ devices with LTE support. The ServerRdsh variant of Windows is expected to be upgraded to an Education-focused offering. Will the Windows 10 S offering become redundant in this situation? We presently have no answer for the same.
While we may be getting three new variants, whose positioning hasn’t been defined as of yet, the variants of Windows 10 that’ve already been available to consumers are as follows — Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Team, Windows 10 Education, Windows 10 Pro Education, Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB (Long Term Servicing Branch), Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise, Windows 10 IoT Core and Windows 10 S — the latest addition to the list.
