When Microsoft announced Windows 10 S back at an event in May, it was pretty squarely aimed at the educational market. It promised to dramatically reduce the setup times for PCs, allowing IT departments to setup devices using a USB drive, streamlining the process.
But now, it looks like the company is going to aim the OS at businesses as well, particularly Microsoft 365 customers. At its Ignite 2017 conference keynote today, the firm announced a range of commercial Windows 10 S devices that will be available from HP, Lenovo, and Fujitsu, starting at $285.
The new PCs promise to enable self-service deployment and simplify management of the devices, reducing the cost of ownership. The devices will be available later on this year.
It"s certainly interesting to see Microsoft expanding on its efforts with Windows 10 S. The only thing that we"ve seen so far that"s even close to aiming at a non-educational market is the release of the Surface Laptop, a PC that consumers can buy, starting at $999.
Of course, Windows 10 S can only run apps that come from the Store, so it will be interesting to see how much interest businesses have in these machines, as many of them tend to run custom Win32 applications. Microsoft will continue to push the Desktop Bridge as a solution for this.