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Microsoft made the Surface Pro both lighter and quieter
Microsoft has mostly left the Surface Pro line untouched since late 2015, but the company is finally giving it a long overdue refresh today. Announced at an event in Shanghai earlier, the new machine -- now simply dubbed Surface Pro -- packs Intel's 7th-gen Core processors (Kaby Lake; m3, i5 and i7 flavors), an enhanced 12.3-inch PixelSense display (2,736 x 1,824) plus optional LTE Advanced radio due later this year. Microsoft calls this "the lightest, the best sounding, the fastest and the quietest Surface Pro ever," and the company was keen to claim that its own machine is 1.7 times faster than the iPad Pro.
Is this Microsoft's new Surface Laptop?
Tomorrow Microsoft is holding its #MicrosoftEDU event where we expect to find out how it will take on Google's Chrome OS, but some of the news may have already leaked. Notorious Microsoft watcher @h0x0d tweeted out a few images of a slim 13.5-inch laptop that apparently runs Windows 10 S -- a cloud-optimized version of Windows that only accesses apps from the Store -- has a PixelSense display, comes in four colors and features an Alcantara-covered keyboard. We've seen that material on a Surface Pro 4 keyboard before, and the other specs line up for a laptop that could take on computers from Chromebooks to MacBooks. Interestingly, the 360-degree view only reveals a few ports, which could be USB, DisplayPort and a headphone jack, plus a Surface Dock connector on the other side. The pictures certainly appear legit and this tweeter has come up with the goods before, but the mix of parts, materials and "Windows Cloud" OS that follows up on the failed Windows RT is a little confusing. We're expecting to find out more tomorrow morning starting at about 9:30AM ET.
