Windows 10 S
By Wayne Maruna
Windows Tennis? Sorry, no, make that Windows 10 S, and coming soon to a computer near you, Windows 10 S Mode. What is he talking about, you say, and why should I care?
You’re surely familiar with Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Well in 2017 Microsoft released a special version of Windows called Windows 10 S. It was aimed at the education market to compete with the highly successful and affordable Google Chrome laptops. Educators needed computers that could be locked down to prevent the introduction of unauthorized software, could be easily reset, and yet could retain the work of students. Windows 10 S was Microsoft’s attempt to gain back some of the sales lost to Chromebooks.
However, plans are now to eliminate this specialized version of Windows, and instead incorporate something called ‘S Mode’ into regular Windows versions. This is projected to happen sometime in 2019.
So here is why you should care. As of sometime in 2019, people shopping for a new computer may be told that the machine they are considering ships by default with Windows 10 in S Mode. What that means is that the only applications that can be added are those found in the online Microsoft Store, and then not necessarily all of those. The idea behind this is that all those designated Store programs have been vetted to work seamlessly and safely with Win10 S Mode. The goal is to provide greater security, faster boot times, better battery life (for laptops), and consistent performance over time, according to a 3/7/18 blog post by Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s (then) Corporate VP for Windows.
So why ‘S’? According to Microsoft’s Windows chief Terry Myerson (who is reported to be leaving Microsoft after 21 years), the ‘S’ is meant to reflect:
o Secure
o Superior Performance
o Streamlined for Performance
o The Soul of Windows 10
Brad Chacos, senior editor with PCWorld, adds that the S could also stand for ‘Store’ since that is the only place you can go to add apps. Apple does much the same thing, requiring that all installed apps come from their App Store.
In S-Mode, Microsoft Edge becomes your only choice for a web browser. Fans of Google Chrome or Firefox are out of luck. Like to use Google or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo as your search engine? Sorry, Charlie, your only choice is Microsoft’s Bing. While there is nothing to prevent you from navigating to www.google.com from within Edge, Bing will remain your one and only default search engine.
There are a lot of things that remain murky about how S Mode will roll out or how it will work. Included in that is the subject of anti-virus software. Will S-Mode require reliance on the built-in Windows Defender, or will there be some accommodation for third party AV products like McAfee, Norton, Kaspersky, or others? A Feb. 3rd 2018 article on Windows watcher site thurrott.com suggests that Microsoft may make some allowance for third party AV apps.
So what if you want to use 3rd party apps not available in the Windows Store? The quick answer is that you can’t, not unless you opt out of S-Mode. This may mean that people comfortable using free apps like Libre Office or Open Office clones of Microsoft’s Office cash cow would be relegated to using the functionally limited Office Online or else navigate their way to Google Docs. According to the blog post by Joe Belfiore mentioned above, users will be able to switch out of S Mode at no charge, regardless of edition (meaning Windows Home, Pro, etc.) But indications are that once you depart S-Mode, there’s no going back.
We anticipate that by the time you read this article beginning in late April or early May 2018, Microsoft will have already rolled out the successor to its version 1709 of Windows 10, the so-called Fall Creator’s Update. This latest version will probably be referred to as version 1803 although that may slide. Meanwhile, much about Windows 10 S Mode remains fluid at the time of this writing.