Windows 10 S officially announced

At its #MicrosoftEDU event in New York City today, Microsoft has officially announced a new version of Windows 10. The new version of Windows is called Windows 10 S, which was previously known as Windows 10 Cloud.

Windows 10 S is a new version of Windows 10 for Microsoft’s education customers. Windows 10 S is a key part of Microsoft’s plans to take on Google’s Chromebook. Windows 10 S is essentially a slimmer or lightweight version of Windows 10 that can only download and install apps from the Windows Store. Users can download Win32 and the modern Windows 10 apps from the Windows Store on Windows 10 S, but it isn’t possible to download and install apps from outside of the Windows Store.

Microsoft’s Terry Myerson also mentioned at the event that Windows 10 S takes a lot less time to start up than Windows 10 Pro devices. According to Microsoft, it takes less than 5 seconds to start up a Windows 10 S when a user has already logged into it previously.

Windows 10 S will also include a Set-up School PCs for schools which let them make a configuration for a PC. The configuration will get stored into one USB stick, and the school can then just plug that stick into Windows 10 S and it will automagically start configuring the device based on the config that was stored on the stick:

However, a key feature of Windows 10 S is that users will be able to upgrade to the normal version of Windows 10 such as Windows 10 Home whenever they want — of course, they will have to pay a price to upgrade, but details regarding that aren’t available just yet.

In case you are wondering — no, this isn’t a completely different version of Windows 10. From the user interface to the normal features are still the same on Windows 10 S, so there’s nothing to worry about.

Windows 10 S devices will start at $189, and they will start shipping this summer. Microsoft is also offering a free subscription to Minecraft’s Education Edition and Windows 10 S will also be available for free to existing schools with Windows Pro PCs.