
Most industry watchers believe that Windows 10X is Microsoft’s answer to Chrome OS and will be targeted at schools, where Chromebooks are extremely popular, and also at remote workers in enterprises.Īs for Windows 10X on dual-screen and foldable PCs, Microsoft is being noncommittal. If you’re thinking that a cloud-focused operating system designed to work on inexpensive hardware sounds suspiciously like Google’s Chrome OS, you’re right. Because of that cloud focus, Windows 10X has been designed to work on more lightweight, less expensive hardware than Windows 10. The announcement said that the first Windows 10X devices, including Microsoft’s own dual-screen Surface Neo, would be available in the fall of 2020.īut then, several months into the pandemic in May 2020, the company did an about-face, announcing that Windows 10X will debut on cloud-focused single-screen devices. (Instead of the screen + hardware keyboard combination found in most laptops, dual-screen PCs have two screens connected with a hinge, while foldable PCs have a screen that folds in the middle, essentially creating two screens out of one.) When Microsoft first announced Windows 10X in 2019, the company said it would run only on dual-screen and foldable PCs, and the operating system would be designed specifically to make the most of that unique hardware. The reasons Microsoft gives for developing Windows 10X keep shifting. What’s the point? Why a new version of Windows 10? Its interface is simpler and more stripped down than Windows 10, and it will run only on hardware designed for it, not on hardware that currently runs Windows 10. Windows 10X won’t replace Windows 10, and it eliminates many Windows 10 features including File Explorer, although it will have a greatly simplified version of that file manager.


(Windows 10 also uses code from Windows Core OS but adds unique code of its own.) Windows 10X resembles Windows 10 in some ways but has been built entirely on code from a universal Windows codebase called Windows Core OS. What is Windows 10X? Is it the successor to Windows 10?
