Re: And they were so close... @AC
"You get only IE instead of Edge - significantly less secure."
How is it less secure? According to CVE Details, IE had "only" 79 vulns last year, whereas Edge has 202 vulns and for comparison Chrome had 153 vulns.
In any case, lack of Edge doesn't mean IE only since there are several other browsers available, Chrome and Firefox come to mind. IE can be locked down pretty well through GPOs.
"And data slurping is the exact same"
Wrong. The telemetry shit can be tuned down (but not off) as in the normal Enterprise versions.
"But you DON'T get the security feature updates with the LTSB."
"Security feature updates"? LTSB versions, release every now and then, will all get 10 years of security updates from the release dates. For example, the 1607 LTSB version ("anniversary update") will get security updates for about 8,5 years as of now, but whatever fancy things MS has concocted in later versions won't be backported to it.
for instance no option to run Office Pro Plus - which is a common requirement in most enterprises that are not fully O365."
The recent Reg article referred to the MS article which specifically states that the upcoming Office 2019 will run on LTSC 2018 version. Office 2016 Professional Plus has feature parity with 365 Proplus.
"And you cant make sites that require IE automatically select it like you can in Edge. The list of problems with such an inappropriate build choice is significant..."
Many choices have pros and cons. Lack of Edge is either a pro or con for some.