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posted by on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-one-saw-that-coming dept.

Microsoft has announced a new version of Windows called Windows 10 S. It only runs apps from the Windows Store, and is positioned between Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro, both of which can run third party applications. Microsoft also announced a new line of Surface laptops running the OS. The laptops have been described as competing with either Google's Chromebooks or Apple's MacBook Air, and aimed at students:

Windows 10 S is Windows 10 with its wings slightly clipped: it can only run apps from the Windows Store, disabling compatibility with the enormous breadth of Windows programs out there, which in the educational context translates to better security, consistent performance, focus for students, and improved battery life. It's cheaper and less versatile than Windows 10 Pro, which is exactly what schools are looking for (and the thing that's had them gravitating toward Google's Chrome OS in recent times).

[...] Immediately upon its introduction, Windows 10 S spans a price range from $189 to $2,199 (for the top Surface Laptop spec). So is this a straightforward and affordable solution for mass educational deployment? Or is it a super streamlined operating system for powering extremely desirable and long-lasting laptops? Yes. Microsoft's answer to both of those things is yes. It's not impossible to achieve both goals with the same software, of course, but it is difficult to position the OS in people's minds.

[...] The Windows on ARM effort is going to be rekindled by the end of this year, and Windows 10 S is the likeliest candidate to be the OS of choice for those new computers, in which case the significance of the S label will once again be complicated. Come the holidays, buying a Windows 10 S PC could mean getting either an Intel or an ARM machine, it could mean cheap and cheerful or it could be a premium portable.

Also at the Washington Post, Engadget, Laptop Mag, and Business Insider.

As well as BGR, Mashable, The Independent, PC World, Tech Radar, ZDNet, Ars Technica, Fossbytes, TechCrunch #1, TechCrunch #2, Venture Beat, and The Street.

What do you think the 'S' stands for?

Previously: Ask Soylent: Ramifications of Removing Windows Store from Enterprise Installs?
Microsoft Adds Store App-Only Restriction as Option in Windows 10


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:09PM (7 children)

    by Pino P (4721) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:09PM (#503863) Journal

    Microsoft is marketing this to K-12 educators [9to5mac.com]: "Windows 10 S mainly intended to run on Windows 10 education PCs from Microsoft partners like Acer and Dell at sub $200 prices."

    Microsoft and its ex-CEO's Gates Foundation also sponsor Code.org [code.org]: "Every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science".

    Yet Visual Studio is a traditional desktop app and not available through Windows Store. So how does Microsoft expect students using devices running Windows 10 S to build and test the programs that they're creating for a computer science homework assignment?

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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:16PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:16PM (#503870)

    They'll probably have a special version of Visual Studio just for the Windows Store, that's only available to educational institutions, and costs a small fortune. They'll convince schools to buy Windows 10S by advertising a "low" price, while neglecting to tell them that adding Visual Studio S will cost another $999 per copy.

  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:23PM (1 child)

    by edIII (791) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:23PM (#503874)

    You were confused. What they meant by "learn computer science" was "training of profitable consumers and mass surveillance grooming". It's like computer science, just minus all of the freedom, choice, transparency, privacy, you get the idea....

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:08PM (#503910)

      Actually, what "they" meant by "computer science" was:

      Learn how to highlight text in word. Learn how to color a cell in excell. Learn how to create a folder in outlook, etc. I.e., learn just enough to remain dependent upon us, so we can continue to extract revenue from you forever.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:39PM (3 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:39PM (#503882)

    Observing the course list my K12 kids have, "computer science" has been dumbed down into operating MS Word and MS Excel for "business users". Every other class that uses word processing or spreadsheets (english lit, geography, science classes) uses google apps. MS Office has finally been pushed off into the business niche. Also they refuse to call it IT, learning pivot tables and changing graph colors in Excel is "computer science" and don't you forget it.

    There is a introduction to programming class that uses LUA in minecraft with opencomputers mod or javascript in the browser or Scratch or try-python. I know that looks like a mess, they change the offerings literally every semester. I think my son is taking minecraft / opencomputers summer school class where they program in Lua, which is a halfway decent OO scripting language, and he's taking the try-python and/or javascript class next year, I guess they haven't nailed down the curriculum entirely. I'm told python is probably going to be the winner. In school historically they did some stuff with scratch which is kind of hard to describe, like kiddie fisher-price labview-reproduced-with-logo or like node-red without the IOT overhead but with more programming. Scratch is hard to explain.

    Anyway yeah people "in the world" were using C when I was a teen and I had a, uh, BBS downloaded copy of Borland Turbo C (this was the late 80s pre-linux era) and I was mostly happy other than no one liked the PC memory model of that era and people couldn't decide if they wanted OS drivers, libraries, or directly F with bare IO ports. Somehow my dad got his employer to pay for turbo prolog which was weird and turbo basic which was basically visual basic but the users/programmers weren't as stupid so it never achieved the reputation that VB acquired.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:06PM (#503907)

      funny, only a few people downloaded that from my board! They all grew up to be something other than hat kids, from what I can tell..

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:32PM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:32PM (#503975) Journal

      Also they refuse to call it IT, learning pivot tables and changing graph colors in Excel is "computer science" and don't you forget it.

      Given that they give the name "mathematics" to a course teaching to calculate, it's only fair that "computer science" gets no better treatment.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:48PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:48PM (#503992)

        Did you skip the class about ensembles? Calculating is a part of maths, so it's not incorrect.
        Of course, if it ain't math until you touch at least the Moments Problem, then we're having a No True Scotsman issue...