We are considering purchasing some low end laptops that will be used for the main purpose of users accessing their primary workstation remotely from home.
HP Stream 14 looks like a candidate.
It comes with 8.1 "home" edition OEM. So, we would need to upgrade to Pro for domain join (so they can use their normal domain user id and password to log in and so we can manage the accounts) either by purchasing Pro Packs for each laptop or via Volume licensing upgrades. Can VL be used to upgrade 8.1 OEM to 8.1 Pro VL?
Does anyone have experience with managing these types of devices. I'm not sure we would need to bother with creating a corporate image for these laptops. We could just add the Pro Pack, join the domain and then manage settings and install required software (VPN, disk encryption and managed antivirus) using Group Policy.
PC Reset or factory restore could be used as needed when reassigning to new users or if there is a major software issue.
I assume the Windows keys are embedded so we can reinstall Windows 8.1 without having to keep track of and manually type in software keys after a restore.
Anyone have experience with this type of use case?