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The big man himself
CEO Satya Nadella launched the event. In the background, there was an illustrator working on a Microsoft Surface Studio drawing a background that was projected behind the speakers.
Annotation in Edge
You can run any browser on Windows 10 S -- as long as you can download it from the app store -- but Microsoft claims Edge is optimized for education because you can annotate and share Web pages.
Administrative setup
There's a wizard to create a Windows 10 S thumb drive; you stick it into a USB port and it automatically copies the relevant packages and begins setup. Microsoft claims that you can pull the stick out after 30 seconds and move on to the next system while the software does its job.
Partners
The usual suspects will have hardware for Windows 10 S.
Pricing
Devices will start at as low as $190; Chromebooks tend to be more expensive.
Minecraft Education Edition
The MEE is a Codebuilder extension for Minecraft.
More Minecraft coding
More Minecraft coding
Coding a robot
Mixed reality
The future of education is 3D interactions with the environment.
Manipulating the Earth via Hololens
Building a solar system
Paint 3D is intended for building models.
Augmented Reality
They used AR to drop a model in for size comparison.
Acer's headset
Acer is one of Microsoft's partners for mixed-reality hardware/software development. It's paired here with a gaming laptop; at the moment, most low-cost education systems aren't powerful enough for VR.
More AR
I can see inside you.
More AR
One of these things is not like the other
Paint 3D, mixed reality and headsets are all cool.
Panos Panay, VP for Surface Computing
When it was time to talk hardware, he came out to wax poetic about how the new Surface Laptop offers "the perfect flow of energy" and more.
Surface Laptop
The seamless fabric overlays on the keyboard section.
Touchscreen
A show of hands: who'd want a slightly thicker screen for a substantially lower price?
Artsy
If this is true, it would be great
Microsoft does its battery tests via local video playback; you'll get longer life with local playback than streaming, since the Wi-Fi in operation also stresses the battery.
The inevitable comparisons
It really doesn't take much to claim this.
Ooookay
Speakers
This is cool: The speakers are under the keyboard.
Dial
To demonstrate its compatibility with the Microsoft Dial input device, he used it for navigating Spotify. The Dial doesn't work on the scree of the Surface Laptop, though.
Unsurprising combination
Deja vu
They trotted out a demo that Apple used to demo the iPad Pro in September 2015, but this time to show how wunnerful the Dial is for manipulating stuff.