What to expect from Microsoft’s May 2 hardware event

Microsoft has more or less focused its efforts on Windows software for about a year. We haven’t heard much from the company about its hardware efforts since the Surface Studio, which was a revelation in itself. But, it seems it’s time for Microsoft to take the reigns once again.

The company has announced a hardware event for May 2, and things are buzzing. We know what you’re thinking: is the Surface Phone finally on the way? Well, we don’t expect that to be the case. However, there is an interesting piece of hardware expected of Microsoft this time.

Windows 10 Cloud

Google’s Chromebooks haven’t changed the market in India, but they’ve reportedly been doing quite well in the education market overseas. It turns out that Microsoft took note of this and the company is reportedly going to launch its own version of Chromebooks.

These are laptops that’ll reportedly run on the Windows 10 Cloud operating system, and function pretty much like Chromebooks. That means they’ll require an active Internet connection to function at all times. In addition, Microsoft will reportedly have quad-core processor, along with 4GB of RAM and the Windows 10 Cloud operating systems.

Xbox Project Scorpio

A lot of details about the upcoming version of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console have been leaked already. But May 2 could be the day Microsoft finally makes it official. In a recent report by Digital Foundry, the company revealed that the Scorpion runs on eight custom x86 cores, clocked at 2.3GHz. In addition, the Scorpio’s GPU has 40 customised compute units at 1172 MHz. There’s also 12GB of GDDR5 RAM, out of which 8GB is dedicated to games and 4GB is for system activities. You can read the full specs of the Xbox Scorpio here.

While Scorpio is most likely going to launch at E3 this year, it’s possible that Microsoft will reveal some more details about the product at its event tomorrow.

Office 2016 Centennial

It’s Microsoft after all, so some software developments are to be expected. Reports have indicated that Windows 10 Cloud will also have versions of Word, Excel and other Microsoft apps. So, a version of its Office suite, called Office 2016, Centennial, is expected to be made available on the Windows Store.

Joe Belfiore

Joe Belfiore is back at Microsoft after a year-long sabbatical. So, though the Satya Nadella should kick things off, expect an appearance from him. Belfiore had tweeted earlier that he’s been working on some educational initiatives at Microsoft since his return. The hashtag for the event is #MicrosoftEDU, which means Belfiore will likely be a big part of the event.

Surface Pro and Surface Book

While we haven’t heard anything about new versions of these two devices, it’s possible that Microsoft will allow hardware refreshes to the two. The company will probably bump them up to the newest Intel SoCs and add some more hardware changes on them. We're hoping the Surface Book is extended to other market (read: India) too.

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Prasid Banerjee

Trying to explain technology to my parents. Failing miserably. View Full Profile