Microsoft held a media event in New York City this morning. The company used the occasion to show off two new laptops from its house-made Surface line as well as a slew of AI-powered enhancements coming to Windows 11 later this month. The hour-long presentation was not livestreamed, but we were there to hear the announcements, watch the demos, and go hands-on with the new devices. Highlights are below.
The Surface hardware announced today is currently available for preorder at Microsoft.com and will officially go on sale starting October 3.
Copilot Gets Injected Everywhere
Courtesy of Microsoft
Copilot, Microsoft’s new AI-powered assistant that was announced earlier this year, is getting fully baked into Windows. Think of it as a side panel you can bring up in practically any part of Windows 11, even in the Edge browser. Its purpose is to help with mundane everyday tasks. For example, you can copy and paste text into a long email and Copilot will neatly organize all the information in a way that’s more easily digestible. You can snip an image and Copilot will automatically recognize the action, and then ask if you want it to analyze the photo. Once it has, it will give you options for what you can do with the image next.
You can use Copilot to find flight information on your phone for an upcoming trip, compose texts based on context, and many other search- and productivity-related tasks. It’ll be accessible via the Windows desktop as a stand-alone app, but also within Microsoft 365 and in Microsoft Edge. The new feature will begin to roll out as part of the next Windows 11 update, which will be released on September 26.
Want to use Bing to shop for stuff? Microsoft says the Shopping tab will also get the Copilot treatment, and you can talk to the assistant to get help finding what you want to buy. Copilot will guide you through a series of questions so it can better understand what you are looking for and show relevant shopping recommendations, including reviews on products and pros and cons. It will be available this fall.
Copilot has some businessy functions too. The AI assistant can comb through your most recent emails, chats, files, and past meetings to collate any important information contained within those things. It can also summarize unread messages, draft replies to chats and emails, and create events based on the guardrails you set. However, it will only be available for enterprise customers starting November 1.
Surface Laptop Studio 2
Photograph: Microsoft
It’s been two years since the launch of the first-gen Surface Laptop Studio and there’s now a second-generation model of the most performance-minded Surface notebook. Like its predecessor, it comes with a 14.4-inch touchscreen display with a refresh rate of up to a 120 Hz, and a dual-hinge mounting system (embedded into the center behind the display and base) that allows you to adjust the screen in different angles. There’s a Laptop mode for full access to the keyboard and touchpad; Stage mode, where you can move the display toward you and deprioritize the keyboard for playing games and watching movies; and Studio mode for drawing and writing as you would on a tablet.
That dual hinge tho.
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
This time around, Microsoft also added a new haptic touchpad with adjustable click sensitivity and a right-click area. There’s also an Adaptive Touch mode that lets users with limited mobility in their hands use the trackpad more easily. Switching into the Adaptive mode disables multi-finger gestures like scrolling, pinching, and zooming. It instead uses a custom algorithm to register movements on the trackpad, giving users with limited finger mobility a way to get more effective input.
The internals have been upgraded with a 13th-gen Intel processor Core i7—Microsoft says it’s twice as fast as the original model. As for the GPU, you’ll have the choice between an Nvidia RTX 4050 or 4060 or Nvidia RTX 2000 graphics card (for more graphics-intensive workloads). The Surface Laptop Studio 2 starts at $2,000 and will ship on October 3.
Surface Laptop Go 3
The new Go 3 costs $799.
Photograph: Microsoft
The Surface Laptop Go 3’s design remains the same as past models. This mid-range laptop has a 12.4-inch touchscreen display (with a 3:2 aspect ratio), a 720p webcam, a USB-C port, a USB-A port, a 3.5-mm headphone jack, and a Surface Connect port. There’s a fingerprint sensor built into the power button.
Internally, it packs last year’s 12th-gen Intel chip with a Core i5 processor, though there’s a bump in RAM on the base model (you’ll now have the choice between 8 GB or 16 GB), plus up to 256 GB of storage. Microsoft says it’s 88 percent faster than the original Laptop Go, with up to 15 hours of battery life. The Surface Laptop Go 3 starts at $799 and will be available on October 3.
Not shown during the keynote, but quietly announced after the fact, is the Surface Go 4. However, this refresh to Microsoft’s lightweight Surface portable is strictly for enterprise consumers. It packs a 10.5-inch screen, a 1080p selfie camera, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a kickstand on the back. You can also purchase the attachable keyboard for the full 2-in-1 laptop experience. It uses an Intel Processor N200 CPU—an upgrade from last year’s Intel Core i3 processor—to give it what Microsoft claims is an 80 percent performance boost. Look for it this fall.
Tweaks to Bing
Image creation using Dall-E 3 in Windows 11.
Courtesy of Microsoft
Bing’s Image Creator tool, which creates an image based on your description, is now getting an upgrade. It uses the new Dall-E 3 engine, which allows you to make changes to the resulting image in real time. Microsoft says the new engine understands prompts better, offering higher-quality images as a result. Every image is now watermarked with a “Generated With AI” label so it’s clear that it is made by a computer.
Searching in Bing is getting even more personal with a feature Microsoft has imaginatively branded Personalized Answers. It uses your Bing Chat history to remember earlier conversations you’ve had to better inform the search results you see. For example, if you’ve frequently mentioned sports and pets with Bing Chat, searching for things to do might include results that involve sports or pet-based activities. You can turn this feature off too.
