Windows 11 Pro Upgrade Questions?

Question

I am going to most likely purchase a dell xps 15 9520. The default option is windows 11 home. I see that if I want to upgrade to windows 11 pro, it is about 60 dollars more on dell site

My current old dell xps 15 9550, I use windows 10 pro. I like pro because I want to be able to use bitlocker to encrypt my laptop. Thus I read only windows pro allows you to do this. I need pro in order to use bitlocker right? I read online you still have encryption on windows 11 home but not called bitlocker?

My questions are

1. Upgrade To Windows 11 Pro for about 60 dollars more as oppose to buy home and upgrade yourself as I read online its $99 to go from windows 11 home to windows 11 pro? So always upgrade it if you can?

2. I have a cheap laptop I bought earlier this year where it uses windows 11. I rarely used it and it is a cheap celeron slow computer. I do not like how it looks as there isn't a task bar but not only that, if you have multiple chrome tabs, you don''t see it on the taskbar like you do in windows 10 pro. Is there a way to fix this or is this how windows 11 is and you can't fix that? That to me is a huge issue because I do not like how there is only one chrome icon in the bottom middle of the screen and you need to highlight it to see which chrome tab you want to click on.

3. If I buy windows 11 or windows 11 pro, can i downgrade to windows 10 or windows 10 pro? I still prefer windows 10 pro. So if i get windows 11 pro, i can downgrade to windows 10 pro. If i get windows 11 home, i get only downgrade to windows 10 home?

ejn63 · Answer

1. You can encrypt a system with bitlocker and Home, but there are features Pro provides that Home does not. It will be less expensive to order the system with Pro than buy the upgrade key later.

2. There are ways to replace the Windows 11 bar with the older one, both registry changes and alternative shells such as Open Shell.

3. You can install Windows 10 on a system that shipped with 11, but note that you may want to do that on a drive other than the one Dell ships you -- or at minimum, image the as-shipped drive. Dell will insist you reinstall the factory OS before rendering support, if it's required.

Tesla1856 · Answer

1. I also suggest you get Windows-11 Pro at time of purchase. If you buy a pre-config that only come with Home, use the "Anytime Upgrade" to get Pro.

2. You can move the bar to the left. The Windows-11 menu is a bit different but it works fine after you get use to it. They just added Start-Menu Folders back-in and some other stuff so there is now really no reason to hold back. Not really even a reason for Start-Menu replacements Shells any more.

3. New systems should use Windows-11 (64bit). It's been the current version of Windows for over a year now. 2025 will be here soon. It's just better.

XPS

Windows 11 Pro Upgrade Questions?

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