There is an amazing amount of choice for hardware for those thinking about 1-2-1

Things move fast in 2024

In case you have not noticed it, chip manufacturers are leading the way on the Windows platform, with the next generation of chipsets that have finally moved us away from Intel's Core I5.? The Intel 12th gen Alder Lake saw the first effective use of P & E cores allowing the Windows 11 experience to be a lot more fluid when running apps.

However these chipsets never gave us the magical "M" series performance that Apple device have shown.... until now.? ? ?Those Apple engineers who created the "M" series chips splintered away from the mothership and formed NUVIA and created the Oryon chip to rival Apple.? Qualcomm Technologies saw this potential and acquired the company back in 2021? for trivial $1.4 billion dollars.

Fast forward to 2024,Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon X1 Plus and Elite, and Intel launch the Core Ultra 100 series, which made an appearance in the Microsoft's Surface Pro 10 for Business.

The Core Ultra 5 & 7 have been Intel's move into the AI chip space, with an onboard AI Boost chip (Neural Processing Unit), to allow local processing of AI related tasks, such as security, background blurring, audio enhancements etc.

Having had a Surface Pro 10 for a while (thanks Microsoft) it proved to be a performance increase on the previous Surface Pro 9, however the advertised battery life Microsoft put out of 19 hours clearly was not there in the real world.? ?However for Enterprise orgs looking to for the most trouble free route to upgrade infrastructure, the Core Ultra 5 & 7 was a logical safe set of hands.

Enter Snapdragon to the market, which if you do not know is ARM architecture.? Running Windows on ARM, and being able to now run fully Win32 and x64 apps, landed performance improvements of the Core Ultra range.? Microsoft interestingly launch their consumer Surface models with the Snapdragon only version.? As a consumer version you could not buy an Intel version for home!? ? ?Now I have been a big fan of Windows on ARM since the Surface Pro X, for battery life, lack of heat generation etc.? On the new Surface Pro 11th Gen version which is Snapdragon, a more realistic 15 + battery hours are available, which for schools is like a holy grail when investing in 1-2-1 programs ??

If you are thinking, I like the sound of solid battery life, then Snapdragon could be for you. However beware that you could fall fowl of hardware compatibility.? ?Not in big way, as the Microsoft ARM Class drivers have got most of it under control, but especially thinking about printer drivers and print management systems, so please test, test, test before making the big purchasing decision.

Anyway back to the story....? Intel have been quick to move with the "Lunar Lake" CPU? which are Gen2 of the Core Ultra which launches in September this year, However we also here news of? "Panther Lake" Gen3 coming. This make for an intense time for people like me as I now just cant decided which platform to upgrade to for the best!

Panther Lake CPU are promising up to 18 CPU cores, these will be optimised with new Cougar Cove Performance cores, and Skymont E-Cores, and also better integrated graphics with 12 Xe3 Celestial GPU cores.

With Lunar Lake set to launch this September allowing Intel to join the Copilot + PC set alongside Snapdragon (but without any hardware compatibility issues) and Panther Lake looking to land in Q3 for 2025 these are going to be really interesting time for people making the decision in the education space.

So lets add the latest news from Snapdragon is an entry SKU X1 Plus 8 core which brings all the advantages of Windows ARM into a lower price point ($700) which could be an amazing opportunity for 1-2-1 rollouts in education.

Of course in the background we also have AMD with the Ryzen AI 300 series and the 9000 series which both make the grade for Copilot + PCs.? ?

My question to you is if you are looking to establish 1-2-1 in your school or are indeed coming round to refreshing devices, would you go Snapdragon or would you wait for the an improved Intel chipset.? Please drop me a line in the comments, I would be really interested to hear your thoughts.