News Microsoft ending Windows 11 SE support October 2026 — Chrome OS competitor also won't get version 25H2 update coming later this year

[Admin]

Meant for budget student laptops, the OS will no longer receive updates or support

Microsoft ending Windows 11 SE support October 2026 — Chrome OS competitor also won't get version 25H2 update coming later this year : Read more

 

[abufrejoval]

Weren't those devices also locked? So you can't just go and install any other OS?
And what happens to the management suite? Is its funcionality available in any other form?

Or are we talking a 100% loss of everything for everyone who trusted Microsoft to support them at least as long as those devices would hold up?

 

[USAFRet]

Weren't those devices also locked? So you can't just go and install any other OS?
And what happens to the management suite? Is its funcionality available in any other form?

Or are we talking a 100% loss of everything for everyone who trusted Microsoft to support them at least as long as those devices would hold up?

How many people or orgs do you know that have one of these?
They are not normal consumer devices.

Is its funcionality available in any other form?

Chromebooks.

 

[ezst036]

Microsoft wants to drive everybody into Windows 11 Advertising Edition that way they can maximize the Microsoft Online Accounts which really is all about maximizing ad revenue.

Welcome to your future of adware. Which used to be considered a form of malware, but its really just the mainstream reality these days. It's the model perfected by Google.

They spy on you - you receive advertisements. Oh joy! Popups and selectively placed......

Hey did you know Amazon is running a sale right now? Yeah that thing you were looking for (cause we spied on you and we know you want it) is 30% off!!! Act today! Click here on your start menu for it

 

[das_stig]

OK you have the right to stop supporting and even remove the right to use the OS iwth your licence agreement, you don't have the right to stop owners using bought for hardware that is now their property from using alternative OS's, time for somebody to challenge this in court !

 

[USAFRet]

OK you have the right to stop supporting and even remove the right to use the OS iwth your licence agreement, you don't have the right to stop owners using bought for hardware that is now their property from using alternative OS's, time for somebody to challenge this in court !

The hardware is so underpowered, that any entities that have some of these aren't interested in "alternative OS's"

 

[edzieba]

Weren't those devices also locked? So you can't just go and install any other OS?

Surface Laptop SE is not locked down (can't speak for other vendors models*) so you can install Linux or ChromeOS or whatever.

But the only customers who would have bought these (education institutions who want a centrally managed device-as-a-service) will not be doing so. If they were willing to roll-their-own deployment and management system in the first place they would not have been using these (or Chromebooks) to start with.

The upshot is that there will be a glut of these devices that enter the market ripe for trivial hacking.

*I would not imagine other vendors would lock them down either though: there's no need to, you buy these to use Windows SE, if you wanted to run something other than Window SE these devices would be pointless in the first place.

 

[DS426]

The hardware is so underpowered, that any entities that have some of these aren't interested in "alternative OS's"

ChromeOS?

 

[USAFRet]

ChromeOS?

Possibly.
But the very low end hardware involved here is only a small part of the whole thing.

 

[usertests]

This meant it struggled to run well on the low-cost devices that schools often buy, a space where Chrome OS thrives

I don't buy it.

I still see a Jasper Lake Windows laptop w/ 4 GB RAM being sold at a nearby Walmart. Probably an N100/N200 with 4 GB as well (perfectly adequate performance from the chip, but pitiful low RAM).

Schools are probably paying more than the market rate for their Chromebooks to add warranty and other services. If Windows needs to move to 8 GB minimum, that shouldn't inflate the cost much. New Chromebooks have abandoned 2 GB, come with 4 GB minimum last time I checked, with 8 GB required to get Chromebook Plus branding. They should be using similar x86 processors, but also MediaTek processors that Windows can't use because of the bizarre Windows on ARM strategy.

Any newer budget x86 chip like the N100 should run fine. I imagine SE was optimized to use less of the full OS and need less RAM (like the Xbox Ally handheld).

They must have axed Windows 11 SE because it makes no sense to maintain as a separate offshoot, and it wasn't popular. There's still that Windows 11 Home edition "S mode" that could fill the same role if it got locked down further for the education market. I bet the same remote management features in SE are in all versions and some have been around for decades.

 

[jlake3]

OK you have the right to stop supporting and even remove the right to use the OS iwth your licence agreement, you don't have the right to stop owners using bought for hardware that is now their property from using alternative OS's, time for somebody to challenge this in court !

The article doesn't seem to say that they're removing the right to use the installed OS, nor that owners are being denied the right to use alternative OSes?

They article does say "schools must plan and budget for this change to ensure their students' devices remain secure and functional", but it never says they're revoking the right to use the OS, just that they're pulling technical support and security patches, which I assume also means that replacement hardware will be limited to whatever new-old-stock is left over. There doesn't seem to be any indication that the Win11SE key will become invalid... just that there won't be the ecosystem to support an enterprise deployment.

As for the issue of using alternative OSes, there does not seem to be anything in the article or any comments saying that you don't have the right to install whatever you want? Just that the nature of the hardware may make it more difficult (although I feel probably not as hard as fully removing and replacing ChromeOS)... and that it's not something a resource-strapped educational IT department is likely going to want to do.

 

[abufrejoval]

How many people or orgs do you know that have one of these?

Why is this relevant?

They are not normal consumer devices.

My understanding is that schools that bought them have lower budgets than most consumers.

Chromebooks.

I was referring to the centralized management: would that still exist in a similar manner on Windows 11?

And Chromebooks means Google gets student data, whereas Windows SE doesn't... yet.

 

[abufrejoval]

I just updated a Chuwi 12.3 Lapbook using a 2GHz Intel Celeron N3450 CPU to the lastest Windows 10 patches.

The main reason to keep it around is a gorgeous 3:2 2736 x 1824 display, evidently also used on some Microsoft Surface device: since it is 100% passive it's also a great Kindle device, including for comics, but the keyboard is also surprisingly good, so it can be used as a typewriter.

The 64GB EMMC storage was too small and slow for Windows, so the only upgrade was a short SATA M.2 128GB drive. With that 5 Watt CPU and only 6GB of RAM it's the weakest system around, but quite frankly it's usable: surfing, LibreOffice, Kindle, Telegram, Signal, in other words: the essentials, can be done. Of course patching takes an eternity, but that's slow even on my fastest systems.

It's running Ubuntu on the eMMC with Cinnamon, which is fine, too and I'll upgrade it to Windows 11 IoT LTSC any day now, just to see how that works (I may need to check for POPCNT support...)

Does it run Far Cry? No, but Solitair works!

 

[russell_john]

Windows 11 Suck Edition - When you said we couldn't make a worse OS than Windows 11 our engineers said "Hold my beer ...." and brought you Windows 11 SE

 

[thesyndrome]

Microsoft's half-arsed attempts to jump into this space have been a bit of a disaster from the get-go back in W10 with "S-Mode", I worked at an electrical retailer at the time, and the number of times that we had an unhappy customer come back ith these machines was staggering, with complaints either being that the microsoft store didn't have enough aps to justify being the only source, or that the machine itself was EXTREMELY weak (with special mention to the HP stream, a device so poorly though out that it didn't have enough eMMC storage to even do cumulative windows updates after 2 months).

I now work as an IT tech in education, and I am working first-hand with ChromeOS for education at several schools, and it really hammered home how poor Microsoft's attempt to break into this space was, with Google Admin being infinitely simpler and faster to use than Active Directory, on top of the OS being light enough that the cheap chromebooks we buy are able to handle it no problem compared to any version of Windows.

I'm not familiar with the BIOS lockdowns for these W11 SE devices, but hopefully they can be have ChromeOS Flex put on them to prevent them from becoming useless e-waste.

 

[abufrejoval]

Microsoft's half-arsed attempts to jump into this space have been a bit of a disaster from the get-go back in W10 with "S-Mode", I worked at an electrical retailer at the time, and the number of times that we had an unhappy customer come back ith these machines was staggering, with complaints either being that the microsoft store didn't have enough aps to justify being the only source, or that the machine itself was EXTREMELY weak (with special mention to the HP stream, a device so poorly though out that it didn't have enough eMMC storage to even do cumulative windows updates after 2 months).

Yup, eMMC for Windows on Goldmont Atoms was not only too small and too slow, but killed the chip a lot faster, due to a design error.

I now work as an IT tech in education, and I am working first-hand with ChromeOS for education at several schools, and it really hammered home how poor Microsoft's attempt to break into this space was, with Google Admin being infinitely simpler and faster to use than Active Directory, on top of the OS being light enough that the cheap chromebooks we buy are able to handle it no problem compared to any version of Windows.

Yes ChromeOS is great, except that you can't run it on a private cloud. Anyone who understands Google's business model can't allow that, especially with kids' data at risk. In the EU ChromeOS is a no-go because of that.

But I'm pretty sure a new Windows successor would include hardwired OneDrive and Recall to ensure no local data is left without M$ inspection and insights extraction.

I'm not familiar with the BIOS lockdowns for these W11 SE devices, but hopefully they can be have ChromeOS Flex put on them to prevent them from becoming useless e-waste.

I can't see that as an in-place update, because these schools aren't likely to have staff or resources to do that. Perhaps some kind of non-profit might want to a) collet these devices en-masse and b) come up with a ChromiumOS/admin-suite to allow a redeploy. But with these kinds of initiatives being culled by MAGA, I'm very sceptical.