Whether it's intended to be simply aspirational or not, the Surface Laptop needs a killer price point

As someone who, in a past life, was involved in IT purchasing for schools, I can only hope the Surface Laptop is aggressive on price.

When it comes to schools, IT purchasing is "price" before anything. Forget form or function; it's all about budgets and the bottom line. The rise of cheap Chromebooks stands to exemplify that fact.

While we're still waiting on the full specs of this thing, the leaked renders from earlier don't exactly inspire in the same way previous Surface devices have. Yes, it looks stunning, but due to the omission of a pen in the marketing materials, you can bet that it won't sport inking, which would've been an easy way to differentiate from Chromebooks in the educational sector. There are tons of clamshells on the market already, and you can effectively transform Windows 10 into Windows 10 S by locking the OS to the Windows Store by group policy anyway.

So, lacking any surprises (and sure, there may well be some), no self-respecting finance department will approve the purchase of the Surface Laptop unless it has an aggressive price point, but does that matter?

from Windows Central - News, Forums, Reviews, Help for Windows Phone http://ift.tt/2qzcdNQ
via IFTTT