Microsoft's New $249 Surface Laptop SE is Its First True Chromebook Competitor (theverge.com) 26
Microsoft is going head to head with Chromebooks with a new $249 Surface Laptop SE, its most affordable Surface yet. While the software giant has attempted to compete with the popularity of Chrome OS in US schools for years, the Surface Laptop SE is the company's first true Chromebook competitor. From a report: Surface Laptop SE will be sold exclusively to schools and students, starting at $249. It's part of a much broader effort with Windows 11 SE, a new student edition designed to compete with Chrome OS that will ship on a range of low-cost laptops in the coming months. Surface Laptop SE is every bit the low-cost Windows device you'd expect to see for $249.
While it retains the same keyboard and trackpad found on Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go, the all-plastic body houses an 11.6-inch display running at just a 1366 x 768 resolution. This is the first 16:9 Surface device in more than seven years, after Microsoft switched to 3:2 for its Surface line with the Surface Pro 3 launch in 2014. The screen looks like the biggest drawback on this device, particularly as we weren't fans of the low-resolution screen (1536 x 1024) found on the $549 Surface Laptop Go. Lenovo's Chromebook Duet ships with a better 10.1-inch (1920 x 1200) display for the same $249 price as the Surface Laptop SE. Intel's Celeron N4020 or N4120 power the Surface Laptop SE, combined with 4GB / 8GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of eMMC storage.
While it retains the same keyboard and trackpad found on Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go, the all-plastic body houses an 11.6-inch display running at just a 1366 x 768 resolution. This is the first 16:9 Surface device in more than seven years, after Microsoft switched to 3:2 for its Surface line with the Surface Pro 3 launch in 2014. The screen looks like the biggest drawback on this device, particularly as we weren't fans of the low-resolution screen (1536 x 1024) found on the $549 Surface Laptop Go. Lenovo's Chromebook Duet ships with a better 10.1-inch (1920 x 1200) display for the same $249 price as the Surface Laptop SE. Intel's Celeron N4020 or N4120 power the Surface Laptop SE, combined with 4GB / 8GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of eMMC storage.
Bad decision on the charging port .... (Score:3)
I like Microsoft's focus on making spare parts available for this and making it user-repairable. But barrel connector power adapters on laptops lead to a lot of broken charging jacks that can't be fixed without removal of the entire main-board to resolder the jack (or a new one) back in place. That's if you got lucky and they didn't crack the board itself in that area. Magnetic charging connectors solve this issue nicely.
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You could have a barrel jack that isn't directly soldered to the motherboard but instead uses a break-out cable to connect to the motherboard.
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I liked it much better than the laptops I've had since, but I could no longer charge it when the charging jack loosened and evntually broke completely. And repairing it required disassembling the whole laptop, which wasn't worth it for a 7-year old computer.
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>repairing it required disassembling the whole laptop
*That* is the part that really bothers me. Over the years multiple vendors have occasionally shown that it's perfectly possible to design a laptop that is almost as easy to work on as a desktop, and yet 90%+ of laptops continue to be designed like some sort of demon-inspired car where you have to go in through the tailpipe to change the headlamp.
There's no excuse for such poor design, especially for components like jacks, hinges, and keyboards that ar
Re: Bad decision on the charging port .... (Score:2)
"that it's perfectly possible to design a laptop that is almost as easy to work on as a desktop, and yet 90%+ of laptops continue to be designed like some sort of demon-inspired"
And this is strange when you consider that when opening a run of the mill modern laptop, you experience the shock at just how small the main board is, with most of the internal space being taken up by the battery, with a bit of left over empty space. There is no good reason why the external connectors are not easily unplugga
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This is the case for my HP zbook 15 g4, but it's a mobile workstation class machine. It's a repair dream, and the first laptop I have ever been able to successfully upgrade the GPU in.
Back to the SE, hitting a $249 pricepoint is hard. I'd be surprised if anything on the box was modular. i.e. even the Ram and Storage soldered in. I *assume* the easy repair will be FRU swaps for keyboards, trackpads, display, and the motherboard.
(I work for Microsoft, but as a tiny cog in a very large machine I'm complete
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These days I just want USB C for charging on everything.
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How will it run? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a little skeptical about chromebooks, but the school recommended them, so I looked into it. I was surprised at the performance they were able to get out of such a low powered machine.
Microsoft is not going to have the same performance as the Chromebook with their offering. They have a 64GB base option. I wonder how full that's going to be after a year up updates. Every Windows machine I have has always slowly filled up the storage even if you don't install very many things. The entire way it's built is assuming you have a reasonable amount of storage. The machine I'm using right now has a 256 GB drive, and just the Windows folder takes up 30 GB.
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64 GB drives won't work. Microsoft will release some special version of Windows but it'll be terrible.
Pretty sure I've seen this before.
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Schools either pay for Google management or MS. There are affordable notebooks for either use case. This is simply MS trying to access the money schools spend on hardware. I think it will backfire because, as mentioned, MS is criminally bad at creating multiple SKUs of the same s
Windows Steam Edition (Score:2)
Compatibility Compatibility Compatibility (Score:1)
I doubt it can be competitive unless it runs most Windows applications. Wintel app compatibility is the only reason Windows could live on lower-end laptops, because of the bloat and cruft Windows incurs compared to ARM and Linux.
This looks and sounds a lot like (Score:2)
... one of the plastic MacBooks from 10+ years ago.
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The key difference being price tag.
Windows 10X by another name (Score:2)
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But is it loaded with "partner applications"? (Score:2)
How hard to upgrade to Linux ? (Score:2)
Assuming that you can get hold of one as the article says "Surface Laptop SE will be sold exclusively to schools and students". It might make a nice laptop to keep in a ruck sack and use on the go.
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Probably to stop the Linux cross-grade hobby industry....
Comment removed (Score:3)
The damning indication is in the name (Score:2)
"Windows 11 SE, a new student edition"
Which no doubt a gimped, crippled, "App" only thing that sort of resembles Windows, but really isn't Windows. In other words, forever locked in "S" mode.
Might as well get a Chromebook. :-\