Microsoft held their #MicrosoftEDU event today where they announced many things including Windows 10 S, the new Surface Laptop, and Microsoft Teams for classrooms.
Windows 10 S is a locked down version of Windows 10 like Windows RT without the restriction to ARM processor-based PCs.It is lighter weight to run on cheaper hardware and restricts users to apps from the Windows Store.
The Surface Laptop is Microsoft’s answer to Google’s Chromebook. It is a cheaper, more limited Surface Book that lacks a kickstand. The CPU can be configured as a Core i5 or Core i7 with 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB RAM configurations. SSDs between 128GB – 1TB are the storage option. It showcases the new Windows 10 S operating system at 2.76 pounds and 14.47 mm thickness.
Microsoft Surface Laptop is performance made personal. Featuring the best of Windows and Office, all-day battery life, a stunning screen that responds to your touch, and a choice of four rich tone-on-tone colors, it delivers the perfect balance of portability and performance.
The Surface Laptop is available for pre-order beginning today in select countries.
Microsoft Teams for Education brings Microsoft’s Slack competitor to the classroom for easy chat-based collaboration.
The new classroom experiences in Teams will help teachers manage their daily workflow more easily than ever before. Using Teams, they can quickly and efficiently create classes with automatically populated student rosters from their school information system; share files and teaching materials; make announcements; divide the class into project groups and monitor progress; create, distribute and grade quizzes; deliver personalized learning with OneNote Class Notebooks; and distribute, collect and grade assignments.
See Microsoft’s summaries of today’s announcements for more details on the Windows Blog and the Office Blog.