By late 2021, major updates for Windows' built-in Notepad text editor had been so rare for so long that a gentle redesign and a handful of new settings were rated as a major update. New updates have become much more common since then, but like the rest of Windows, recent additions have been overwhelmingly weighted in the direction of generative AI.
In November, Microsoft began testing an update that allowed users to rewrite or summarize text in Notepad using generative AI. Another preview update today takes it one step further, allowing you to write AI-generated text from scratch with basic instructions (the feature is called Write, to differentiate it from the earlier Rewrite).
Like Rewrite and Summarize, Write requires users to be signed into a Microsoft Account, because using it requires you to use your monthly allotment of Microsoft's AI credits. Per this support page, users without a paid Microsoft 365 subscription get 15 credits per month. Subscribers with Personal and Family subscriptions get 60 credits per month instead.
Microsoft is releasing a pair of new Surface devices today, both models that undercut last year's Surface Laptop and Surface Pro on price but also take a pretty big step down in specs. One of the devices is a new 12-inch Surface Pro tablet, which we've covered in more detail here. The other is a new 13-inch Surface Laptop, whose specs and price straddle the narrow gap between the current seventh-generation Surface Laptop and the original price of the aging Surface Laptop Go 3.
The new Surface Laptop starts at $899, and preorders open today. It will be available on May 20.
The new laptop shares many specs in common with last year’s entry-level seventh-generation Surface Laptop, including an Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor, 16GB of RAM, and support for Windows 11’s expanded Copilot+ capabilities. It’s also smaller and lighter than the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop. But the CPU has eight cores instead of 10 or 12, the screen is smaller and lower resolution, and you’re more limited in your upgrade options; we’ve outlined the key differences in the table below.
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Nearly a year after announcing the feature, Microsoft is finally ready to roll the controversial Windows Recall feature out to the general public, the company announced today on its Windows Experience Blog.
Only available on Copilot+ PCs, a subset of Windows 11 systems sold within the last year or so, Recall takes continuous screenshots of everything you do on your PC, saving them, scraping text from them, and saving it all in a searchable database. This obviously has major security and privacy implications—anyone who can get access to your Recall database can see nearly everything you've done on your PC—which is why Microsoft's initial rollout attempt was such a mess.
Recall's long road to release involved a rushed initial almost-launch, harsh criticism of its (then mostly nonexistent) security protections, multiple delays, a major under-the-hood overhaul, and five months of testing in Microsoft's Windows Insider beta program. Microsoft signaled that Recall was nearly ready for release two weeks ago when it came to the near-final Release Preview channel.
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Microsoft is trying to simplify its many AI offerings by streamlining how the products are pitched to customers, according to internal slides from a recent presentation.
The software giant has a bunch of different AI tools called Copilot. There's Copilot for its Teams chat app, Copilot for its PowerPoint presentation tool, Copilot for its Outlook email service — just to name a few.
These products are often split into different "solution areas," as Microsoft calls them. Having Copilot tools in many different buckets can slow down sales, confuse customers, and affect cost and quality of the tools, people in the organization told Business Insider. They asked not to be identified discussing private matters.
Microsoft has sales teams focused on each solution area, which will now be consolidated.
Microsoft Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff this week unveiled plans for addressing these issues in the company's upcoming fiscal year, which begins in July. BI obtained copies of slides from his presentation.
According to one of the slides, three major changes include:
The organization currently has six solutions areas: Modern work, Business Applications, Digital & App Innovation, Data & AI, Azure Infrastructure, and Security.
Beginning in July, these areas will be combined into three: AI Business Solutions, Cloud & AI Platforms, and Security.
AI Business Solutions will include tools such as Copilot for Microsoft 365, Copilot for Teams, Copilot for Outlook, plus a data visualization product called Power BI, according to a person who attended a Thursday all-hands for Althoff's organization. This person asked not to be identified discussing private matters.
"We are evolving the commercial solution areas within our sales organization to better reflect the era of AI and support the growth of our customers and partners," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "This evolution reflects the shift in how customers and partners are buying and will better serve their needs."
The other changes include expanding training for salespeople and a reorganization to Small, Medium Enterprise & Channel (SME&C) team, which was announced internally earlier this year.
The changes come as Microsoft is trying to figured out how to make money from its significant AI investments. It has mulled changes including new software bundles with Copilot. The company earlier this year said it plans to spend $80 billion on expanding its network of AI data centers.
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Some elements of Microsoft's Copilot assistant in Windows 11 have felt like a solution in search of a problem—and it hasn't helped that Microsoft has frequently changed Copilot's capabilities, turning it from a native Windows app into a web app and back again.
But I find myself intrigued by a new addition to Copilot Vision that Microsoft began rolling out this week to testers in its Windows Insider program. Copilot Vision launched late last year as a feature that could look at pages in the Microsoft Edge browser and answer questions based on those pages' contents. The new Vision update extends that capability to any app window, allowing you to ask Copilot not just about the contents of a document but also about the user interface of the app itself.
Microsoft's Copilot Vision update can see the contents of any app window you share with it.
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Microsoft
Provided the app works as intended—not a given for any software, but especially for AI features—Copilot Vision could replace "frantic Googling" as a way to learn how to use a new app or how to do something new or obscure in complex PC apps like Word, Excel, or Photoshop. I recently switched from Photoshop to Affinity Photo, for example, and I'm still finding myself tripped up by small differences in workflows and UI between the two apps. Copilot Vision could, in theory, ease that sort of transition.
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