HP is beating Microsoft at its own game

With a slew of new laptops, HP has come out swinging hard at Microsoft's hardware line. It's entirely possible that this is the intended result of Microsoft's hardware strategy, since other hardware makers are often Microsoft partners and customers that use the Windows OS. Even so, just a few weeks after Microsoft unveiled its new Surface Laptop, HP is already refreshing its own laptops that now offer much more.

The HP Envy is probably the closest to a Surface Laptop competitor. For $850, users get 8GB of RAM and a Core i7 processor. The $999 Surface Laptop starts at $999 with 4GB of RAM and a Core i5 processor. The Envy laptop also comes with a larger SSD at 256GB instead of 128GB. Even if a user chooses to pay the extra $70 to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro from Home edition, the price is still $80 cheaper than the base Surface Laptop.

The one area the Surface Laptop is expected to best competitors is in battery life. The laptop runs on the new Windows 10 S OS, which only runs applications from the Windows Store. This helps the laptop better manage resources. HP says the Envy 13 gets around 14 hours of mixed usage, but Microsoft says the Surface Laptop achieves that during continuous video playback.

Users might put up with lower battery life for the sake of a more powerful OS, though. Many consumers who buy the Surface Laptop might also take Microsoft's offer to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for free, which would likely lower the battery life. That significantly reduces the appeal of Microsoft's offering.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter that much for the Redmond, Washington-based software company. It gets a cut of the money either way since most computers still run on Windows. The new hardware from HP does raise some questions about Microsoft's current hardware strategy. While the Surface line inspired some popular copycat designs that helped the PC industry, the company has slowed its hardware releases and has shunned the popular new USB-C standard.

Fortunately for PC makers, Apple seems to have dropped the ball with its latest MacBooks. This has been an opportunity seized by makers of high-end laptops like the Razer and thin ultrabooks like HP. Microsoft could still probably try a little harder to inspire new hardware going forward, though.