Find the Blue Penguin - Handwriting recognition, more Copilot+ PCs tests, Brave BYOM
It's only been one week, but it's really been 14 years, and Paul is calling: Microsoft and Qualcomm have finally made Windows 11 on Arm both viable and desirable. Nothing is perfect, but this platform is pretty incredible. Some notes from the past week:
Mission Accomplished
- As a reminder, Paul finally got the Yoga Slim 7x last week and updated on app compatibility, hardware compatibility, gaming, and in-box AI experiences in time for WW - only found one non-working app, Google Drive. Then...
- More app and game compatibility testing. Since then, played a lot more DOOM (2016), ran into one issue that's surely WOA-related (note beta graphics driver, though)
- Video encoding performance: Snapdragon X vs Snapdragon X vs Core Ultra 9 H-series vs MacBook Air M3
- Initial thoughts on battery life and then More thoughts on battery life. The Yoga Slim 9x and Surface Laptop both get about 10 hours of real-world battery life (so far), compared to 15 hours for the MacBook Air 15-inch M3.
- Hardware compatibility update: Only one of my devices doesn't work, the Focusrite.
- Surface Laptop 7 first impressions and second impressions
- HP Elitebook Ultra first impressions
Windows 11
- After skipping Week D last Tuesday, Microsoft belatedly delivers a Week D preview update for Windows 11 version 24H2
- No new features, so next Patch Tuesday will be light for 24H2
- 22H2 and 23H2 got a big Week D update last Tuesday, so Patch Tuesday will be meaningful
- As of July's Patch Tuesday, 22H2, 23H2, and 24H2 will all provide the same basic feature set
- Canary, Dev, Beta (last Friday): nothing exciting, a few small features or changes
AI & Microsoft 365
- European Commission "shifts" investigation of Microsoft/OpenAI partnership. Is Ken Starr in charge of this thing?
- Microsoft highlights new Copilot features coming to Microsoft 365 in July
- Copilot in OneNote can now recognize handwritten text. It's 2002 all over again!
- Pixel 9 family will promote unique "Google AI" features
- Brave introduces a BYOM plan for its web browser
- Thanks to AI, Google Translate now supports 110 new languages
Xbox
- Xbox Cloud Gaming Fire Sticks it to Amazon
- Another two weeks of Xbox Game Pass
- Forza Horizon 4 (from 2018) to be delisted December 15. Why?
Tips and Picks
- Tip of the week: Get $10 off Tony Redmond's Office 365 for IT Pros 11th Edition
- App pick of the week: Docs in Proton Drive
- RunAs Radio this week: NGINX as a Service with Buu Lam
- Brown liquor pick of the week: Jack Daniels Old No. 7
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell
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The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.
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