Microsoft kills Windows 11’s cut-down Chromebook rival

Remember Windows 11 SE? I didn’t, until I made my regular news rounds this morning. But it looks like the stripped-down, low-power version of Windows, originally intended to counter Chromebooks in the lucrative education market, is making a final bow soon. Microsoft says the operating system is getting its last update later this year, and will lose full support in 2026.

That’s according to an updated Microsoft support page (spotted by German site Dr. Windows), which says that version 24H2 will be the last for Windows SE. All updates for the OS, “including software updates, technical assistance, and security fixes,” will be shut down in October of 2026. If that date sounds familiar, it’s the new, adjusted end-of-life date for the long-suffering consumer version of Windows 10, too.

Windows 11 SE was announced in late 2021 and launched in January of 2022, explicitly designed for the education market. While it shares most of the codebase and features of Windows 11, it’s also far more locked down, with standard users unable to install third-party 32-bit apps or even apps from the Windows Store without admin assistance. Windows 11 SE lacks widgets and some Snap Layout options for the sake of being “distraction-free,” it’s even more insistent upon Microsoft applications like Office and Edge, and it needs to be managed via the Intune system.

Windows 11 SE was meant to be a successor to Windows 10 S, which didn’t make a particularly big splash, either. It’s easy to imagine how school administrators, used to standard Windows 10/11 or Google’s popular and cheap Chromebook education setup, wouldn’t be keen on sacrificing advanced features.

That said, giving Windows 11 SE users only a year of warning before it fully loses support seems a little short. One wonders if Microsoft’s workforce is feeling the pinch after all those recent layoffs. Microsoft still offers service to schools via the Windows 11 for Education system.