Microsoft launches its first laptop

Microsoft on Tuesday announced the launching of the “ultimate laptop,” its first such computer, calling it the “thinnest, most powerful PC ever created.”

The Surface Book, with a 12hour battery life, will go on sale Oct. 26 from $1,499, top officials at the tech giant said at a presentation of new products in New York.

“It’s the first laptop we’ve built, it redefines everything,” Microsoft’s Panos Panay said, calling the new computer with its 13.5inch, 6millionpixel screen “the most powerful laptop on the planet.”

Although Microsoft, which was founded in 1975 as a software company, in recent years has marketed personal tablets and smartphones, among other things, this is the first time that it has made a foray into the laptop subsector.

According to Panay, the Surface Book is twice as fast as the MacBook Pro, its main rival.

Panay, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Surface division, said that the keyboard is “perfect,” silent and very powerful.

He added that the firm has been thinking about coming out with a laptop for years.

The Surface Book also functions as a tablet and has a detachable screen, along with an Intel i7 Core processor, up to 16 gigabytes of RAM, two USB ports and a third one for SD cards.

Microsoft also presented other products, including the Surface Pro 4 tablet, which is 30 percent faster than the earlier version, and the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL smartphones, at the event.

Last summer, the firm launched the Windows 10 operating system, and on Tuesday it said that in the eight weeks since then the new version has been installed on 110 million devices.