Microsoft announces Windows 11 SE and budget Surface laptop

Microsoft will announce a new version of Windows 11 and a new Surface Laptop on Tuesday. Windows 11 SE and Surface Laptop SE are aimed at students and college students. The operating system is also coming to hardware from Microsoft partners such as Dell and HP.

Windows 11 SE will be available to schools and other educational institutions. Additionally, this version of Windows will ship on budget laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell, Dynabook, Fujitsu, HP, JP-IK, Lenovo, and Positivo. Microsoft itself also comes with its own budget laptop: the Surface Laptop SE.

In October there were already rumors that Microsoft was working on a budget laptop. The laptop had to be able to compete with the ChromeBooks. Many students and pupils work with this. The Surface Laptop SE should start at $249.

The Surface Laptop SE is equipped with an Intel Celeron N4020 or N4120 with Intel UHD Graphics 600-igp. It is an 11.6 “laptop with a resolution of 1366×768. Two different versions will also be available for the time being with 64GB eMMC storage space and 4GB RAM and with 128GB eMMC storage space and 8GB RAM.

The laptop is equipped with a webcam for video calling and therefore comes standard with Windows 11 SE. Furthermore, Microsoft claims that the laptop can be easily repaired, with easily replaceable parts such as the screen, keyboard and battery.

Windows 11 SE is optimized for educational use, but will also allow apps outside the Microsoft ecosystem. Furthermore, the operating system is aimed at working in the cloud, but all Office 365 can also be used offline, according to Microsoft.

The first laptops with Windows 11 SE are planned to be available in the coming months. The Surface Laptop SE will hit the market in early 2022.