Microsoft's future depends on Windows 11 SE succeeding

Stance: Microsoft's new Windows xi SE and Surface Laptop SE are the latest efforts to rival the Google Chromebook didactics empire and for me information technology marks an important bulletin from the firm: Information technology knows today's students are tomorrow's customers.

Microsoft is again challenging Chromebooks and Chrome OS with the new lightweight version of Windows eleven it is calling Windows 11 SE. That's accompanied by new Windows Surface SE laptop that's super affordable, with third-party manufacturers signed-on to sell laptops directly to schools.

Microsoft initial proposition looks well placed to have a run at Google's authority in pedagogy, specially in the The states. Even so, I don't believe spreading the gospel of Windows eleven and shifting a piffling more hardware is fifty-fifty close to being the key goal here.

The Chrome OS platform doesn't just get kids using Google-based devices, it embeds them within the Google cloud software ecosystem. Submitting essays within Google Docs, working from Google Slides presentations and Google Sheets spreadsheets.

It means they'll store all of their documents and files inside Google Ane cloud storage, exchange emails in Gmail, brand video chats within Meet, and then on. They're collaborating with each other in real time using all of these platforms, whether they're learning remotely or in class.

Word life

When I was a schoolboy, all I knew from school and college was Word, PowerPoint, Excel and then Internet Explorer and Hotmail. When I got to university, the computers in the libraries were Windows-based. When information technology came to our creative endeavours, it was the iconic G3 iMacs. It's anecdotal, obviously, but I've personally never purchased a Chromebook, probably because of the way I learned to interact with tech.

Now, youngsters in Chromebook-based education environments are less likely to know Microsoft products at all (unless they're gaming on PC or Xbox). Some schools work from Chromebooks, others demand students purchase iPads.

All that means kids are less likely to exist familiar with Office products and that ways they're less probable to employ them when they go off and buy their own products.

Put it this way, if you've been using Google Docs forever, why would you suddenly switch to Microsoft 365 and start handing over a £vi.99 a month subscription fee to use Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and OneDrive storage.

I recollect this is what the Windows xi SE suggestion boils downwardly to. Microsoft isn't spying 1990s-like dominance of the operating system market place because Redmond is far more concerned with making its services available everywhere these days. Microsoft doesn't actually think selling low-spec $250 Surface hardware is going to shatter revenue records, either.

Information technology knows that by getting children using Microsoft services at present, it has a better gamble to win the futurity, to ensure they get customers after they're done existence students. At that place's enough at pale here, considering all of the current chatter about the metaverse. It'due south non going to exist about laptops, tablets, smartphones and fifty-fifty games consoles forever.

Microsoft as The Godfather

We're heading towards a new reality where the services nosotros are used to using either be in a different visual world or are superimposed on our current reality. Microsoft has been preparing for this for half a decade with its HoloLens endeavours, so this is zippo new, despite Facebook/Meta'south attempts to define this future.

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It needs to ensure that ahead of this switch, its products are the ones that today'due south children and teenagers are using. They demand to be living inside that Microsoft 365 ecosystem; not Google'due south.

Information technology'southward similar to that infamous proffer in The Godfather when Tom Hagen says:

"At present we take the unions and we have the gambling; and they're the best things to take. But narcotics is a matter of the future. And if we don't get a slice of that activity, we chance everything we take. I hateful not now, but ten years from at present."

Effectively, us millennials and older generations are all hyper familiar with Microsoft products and services. In the Hagen analogy, we're the best things to have right now because nosotros're the ones with purchasing power. However, bypassing children while they're at school ways the company risks everything it has. Not now, merely ten years from at present.

This is all about redressing some balance, pulling some of the power back from Google'due south education empire. About attempting to ensuring that Microsoft'south cloud is the one we'll all have our heads in when the displays are inches from our eyeballs.

Microsoft's initial announcement carries enough of promise. Its previous efforts to get its claws back into the education market accept been disruptive and disjointed and often abandoned before they've even had take chances to gather steam. Windows eleven SE carries a clear purpose and it feels like Microsoft is ready to put the machine behind it. Information technology's very future depends on its success.

Source: https://www.trustedreviews.com/opinion/microsofts-future-depends-on-windows-11-se-succeeding-4178594

Posted by: hudsonthied1991.blogspot.com

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