At its Ignite event today, Microsoft placed a lot of emphasis on “firstline” employees, a term it uses to describe the…
At its Ignite event today, Microsoft placed a lot of emphasis on “firstline” employees, a term it uses to describe the workers that come in direct contact with customers. The company has these people in mind and has designed special packages including a laptop, Windows 10 S and Office 365 F1. HP, Acer, and Lenovo have low-cost machines on the way crafted with the specific purpose of supplying firstline employees, and they’ll start at just $275.
HP’s Stream 14 Pro will be the first of the “Windows 10 S devices for Microsoft 365 F1″ to become available. This 14” ultra-slim laptop is also the cheapest model at $275. HP’s specifications for the machine include an unspecified Celeron processor, 4GB of single-channel DDR3L memory, and 64GB of eMMC. The display is a TN panel with a resolution of 1366×768 resolution. The specs aren’t impressive, but given that the price includes both Windows 10 S and Office 365 F1, the deal becomes a bit sweeter.
Acer will have two models: the Aspire 1 and Swift 1. The Aspire 1 name isn’t new—it’s been used quite a bit over the years and refers to Acer’s netbook family. We couldn’t pull up the exact specifications on that model, but Microsoft describes it as a 14″ ultra-slim for $299. Acer’s Swift 1, by comparison, is a 13″ laptop with a Pentium N4200,4GB of DDR3L memory, and 64GB of eMMC flash storage. It does sport a 1920×1080 IPS display, which is probably why it costs bit more at $349.
Finally, Lenovo will be offering up a 14″ ultra-slim laptop called the V330. It doesn’t look like details of this model have hit the web yet either, but Microsoft says it will go for $349 in February of next year. Acer’s two machines should be available a little sooner, in Q4 of this year, while HP’s Stream 14 should be hitting some time next month.
