Ask Paul: September 3 (Premium)

With summer drawing to a close and a big month coming up for Microsoft, it’s no surprise that this week’s questions are both excellent and timely.
What to expect from Microsoft’s September event
crunchyfrog asks:

Now that Microsoft has announced their September 22nd event meeting date, I would be curious to know what you expect to see or hear from them as far as hardware, software or any other major changes coming as well as your predictions of what they will not announce that others might be expecting.

For starters, it’s worth examining the language that Microsoft uses in its invitation email. First, it refers to this event as “the Microsoft Fall 2021 Event,” suggesting that it’s not just about Surface. And then it more explicitly mentions that “the company will talk about devices and Windows 11.” That sentence alone may require a bit of speculation. Is it about Surface and Windows 11? PCs in general and Windows 11?

I’ve presented this as a Surface event, but the more I think about it, I think that Microsoft will discuss new (and existing) Surface PCs that will come preloaded with Windows 11 and possibly third-party PCs that come preloaded with Windows 11. And Windows 11 as a more general topic. I guess we’ll see.

With regards to expectations, I’m mostly concerned with Surface here. We already know what Windows 11 will look like for 1.0, and the timing of this event is right after (or around) the time that IFA 2021 would be held, but that event was canceled this year. Normally, PC makers announce new hardware for the holiday season at IFA, so I suspect we’re going to see a lot of standalone product announcements this month from Lenovo, HP, Dell, and others, and most likely before the Microsoft event. (Some may choose to do so at that event, if third-party PCs are part of it, I guess.)

Looking at the Surface product line, I think it’s fair to point out that there isn’t a single PC or device that isn’t in need of at least a refresh. Let’s run down the list:

Surface Go. We’re on Surface Go 2 right now, and that was released in May 2020. To date, both Surface Go models shipped in the first half of the year, so this one is overdue. I’ve seen rumors of a Core i3-based Surface Go 3, so it’s reasonable to assume that we might see that this month.

Surface Laptop Go. This inexpensive little laptop shipped in October 2020 with lots of compromises. I guess the question here is whether it just disappears or whether we see a refresh; it’s only been a year, so I’ll put a Surface Laptop Go 2 in the unlikely column.

Surface Laptop. Surface Laptop 4 arrived in April 2021, but it also arrived with previous-generation AMD processors, so fans would obviously love to see a Laptop 5 sooner rather than later. Again, Surface moves slowly, so my guess is that we won’t see Laptop 5 this month, it’s just too soon.

Surface Pro. Microsoft has been milking the classic Pro design for several ye...