Today at BETT, Microsoft made a range of announcements around the educational market. Of course, that includes a bunch of new partner PCs. Interestingly, there are two new PCs using the Snapdragon 7c, a new chipset that Qualcomm announced in December.
The first PCs to use the new chipset are the JP.IK Turn T101 and the Positivo Wise N1212S, which start at $299 and $575, respectively. While Microsoft and Qualcomm are promising double the battery life of traditional Intel-based PCs, another major value proposition to these devices is 4G LTE connectivity.
Frankly, cellular connectivity is something that currently doesn"t exist at that price point. In an Intel-based PC, you"d normally pay over a hundred dollars extra just for the cellular modem, which is a third of the price of the Turn T101.
Microsoft also said that it"s announcing new educational PCs from Acer, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, which start at $219. However, there weren"t any specific models listed. Microsoft said that there are 14 new models, including the two Snapdragon PCs, and seven of them include "the newest Intel processor", with 46% better performance.