Devindra has been writing about the way technology intersects with our lives for nearly 20 years. He started the Amherst Student's first technology column, worked in IT support for many (many) years, and eventually moved to Brooklyn to cover New York's tech scene in 2009.
It's been a quiet week of news, but we've been feverishly testing Microsoft 's new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop Copilot+ AI PCs. In this episode, Devindra and Sam will answer your questions about Microsoft ’s new hardware, and we'll deliver some of our first impressions. It turns out Microsoft may have finally gotten Windows on Arm support right! And some of the Copilot+ AI features are actually useful, surprisingly enough.
As always folks, if you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to us in iTunes or your podcatcher of choice, leave us a review in iTunes. That's always super helpful and drop us an email at podcast at engadget. com. Question for you, Sam, what was your first impression upon tearing open the Surface Laptop?Right away I think it's good they didn't mess with the design. The design was never the issue for the Surfaces, they're, very beautifully crafted.
Everything is fast. Everything is zippy. It boots up quickly. It certainly wakes up from sleep almost instantly. Which is nice. Battery life looks really good. And I think mostly coming I feel so burned, Sam, having reviewed the Surface Pro 9 with 5G with that weird, like the 8CX chip. Or even theThe Surface Pro X, you should go back, check out Sherilyn's review of that thing. But that was like Microsoft's big design push. Hey, we have thinner bezels.
It installs normally, even though it's definitely not an ARM native game. And then when you try to actually play, you can't. And it's not because League itself doesn't run. It's because Riot's anti cheat system, Vanguard, needs kernel level support. So they asked you, hey, go restart your system so it can install the Riot anti cheat.
So there is still some of that, but I think at least from my typical workflow I was launching like most of the apps I use really it's only Evernote is the one that's emulated from X 86, everything else, like Spotify, Slack, and all those. Yep.All of your major stuff just seems to play pretty nicely, and even when it's not native, it still seems to run pretty fast.It feels pretty good. And I did try out some of the AI features as well.
And so it's all there's some weird just like incongruities where you have the same thing. It's got the same name, but they work differently depending on which app you're using it in. And that's a little weird.That's a clear, like a sign that this is all coming in hot. And then Microsoft was really working on this stuff very recently.is a big, like yellow preview tag on the button. Sure. So yes, it's very clear that this is still like a, work in progress.
That's wild. I did double check like Qualcomm's what they were expecting from when they initially announced the Snap drug and next leap. Yeah. And that's that's pretty on target for what they were in. That's insane to have that come out of the super thin laptop tablet hybrid.
I was trying to hook around to find it and they basically just gave up on that. It is really weird to sell a Surface as a tablet, not include a keyboard, and then be like it's a full PC, right? It's a PC tablet. Except even you don't support tablet software very much or very well anymore.
Okay. Windows software side. Are you ready to support this? They shrug their shoulders. So like it is so many. So many things have to align for this to work really well on the PC side. And I think four years after Apple Silicon debuted, it seems like we're there. I've also seen the reviews of the the Asus Copilot Plus PC that seemed to be pretty impressive.
Let's take some questions from the audience. Hello, folks. Podcast producer Ben is here, and I'm sure you've been looking at questions, and what are people thinking about these devices?Yeah, so hey, everybody. There are a few questions. One of the big ones from Simon B. is, how do you guys feel about the reward system with the Edge browser?Oh, I saw that question. I don't, I'm not into any of that stuff. I don't know.
The SSD was doing a lot of work, the wireless chipset was doing a lot of work, and I could hear the fan. It wasn't, it was noticeable, but it wasn't like noisy or loud or anything. It was just like a pleasant hum. Any other questions we want to tackle?So DudeNameCharlie said rewards for your data in relation to reward system for Edge browser Dom Larry said here in Australia, the flex keyboard and pen is 7.
Maybe inside your laptop. But you have good internet and you want to play some games. I could see that being a thing.good title. Quick thing on this surface. This is the first surface with an OLED screen and the screen looks fantastic and the speakers are very good too. So I've been using this as I, I just want to do a little writing. I'm going to go to bed, like just lay down, bed, rest my back a little, but I can still like watch stuff.
brings a really interesting twist on the traditional like Zelda game style. I do wish they gave her just like a regular weapon. I don't think it has to be a sword, but I want to just see Zelda run around and bonk people on the head with a giant hammer or something.We've only seen a little bit from like the teasers and the preview. So hopefully she has her wand that makes echoes. And then, she gets a little bit of melee melee action in there too.
And in 2019 they also announced a complete do over, like they were stopping development of that version of Metro Prime four and starting it over. So now here we are, it's 2024 and this game is coming next year. They say for the switch, but it's okay, or whatever else Nten has next year, right? This is a lot of this is prep for software for next year or for their new system.
And also, yeah, probably working together with Nvidia again, because nobody else really used the Tegra chipset. I think the Zune HD had the Tegra, which I really liked. But. That it's just like dead Hardaware. I do think a lot of these games will just work across both systems. Look at this. There's still some 3D work in there, but it's just mostly, beautiful illustrations. I don't know anything else from the Sam.No, that was about it You know, there's a ton of stuff there.
That's all we care about. That's all we want to work on. And so it's they are very focused on the, especially the safety part of AI. And so I appreciate that kind of directive, but like you said, there's, it's so early that it, there's really not much to talk about in terms of like actual deliverables just yet.I think even like John Carmack, like when he left meta and very loudly was like, I cannot work with like your weird corporate rules and stuff.
Something I do want to talk about and shows like the immediate dangers of AI is perplexity. And wire just put up a piece called perplexity is a bullshit machine. If you've not heard of perplexity is like an AI search engine type of thing where you'd put in queries and it will just answer them. And how Lyft and a lot of these companies like rose to power. But a lot of it was just by a thing. Hey, we're going to deploy this thing, which is using tech. Oh, you have local laws about how people handle taxis or things like that, or share transportation. We're going to ignore those entirely. And just do our thing.Yeah.
I don't know how much of this seems like a legitimate business personally. Any thoughts, Sam, any thoughts beyond that?No, you hit on the head. It's like they're priming themselves up to be the example of what not to do in terms of using AI responsibly. And so I guess we'll see how that fallout ends up.All right, let's move on to one listener question we got from Mark Dell, who's now watching our live stream. So thank you for being a loyal listener and watcher, Mark.
Yeah, you need all the Hardaware to support it. And wifi seven is coming. It's going to support faster Hardaware or faster speeds. Ethernet is always becoming a faster thing, but I think at best I see 2. 5 gigabit cards in most systems. I guess you could get 10.
It just took forever and I really killed my workflow a little bit. So you still need the internet sometimes. And if you can get that good internet internet, go for it. I see Mark Dell in the chat. He says he's already downgraded his Google fiber. He could do that in the app, so that's super useful. And it's For someone who remembers when wifi was just like very unreliable and spotty. It's Oh, this is so nice to not have to think about it. And a lot of these new wifi seven routers are really expensive, but Hey, when the prices come down, I think you just appreciate it from not having to like constantly babysit your wifi like that.
You do get, full analog control and you get some of that like rapid trigger stuff that you see some on some gaming keyboards. I've been really enjoying it so far. I just got to find time to write it up.I just picked up one of those new fee keyboards. I think we've recommended the new fi or new fee.the keyboard that I bought before this one. And it's really great. And they make some really good low profile keyboards. Which is actually my preference.
Who. So glad you're digging it, Sam, even if it's messy. One thing I want to shout out is a show I think you will like, and a lot of people should be watching, Not Enough People are watching Evil, which was a show on CBS by the Kings, people who did The Good Wife and The Good Fight. It is straight up X Files.first season of that. Yeah. And then there was like a long hiatus. It was either after season one or season two. And I keep meaning to go back to it. But yes that show is awesome.
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