New Surfaces are too expensive! | Windows Central Podcast | 05/21/2026

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]because the the live stream puts a tweet out for us anyway for the you for the Twitter live stream. So, there's no need.

[00:00:10]>> I just got to wait to make sure this is definitely running.

[00:00:13]>> Uh this is 395, right? Because you guys did one.

[00:00:16]>> Yeah, we did. Me and Ben did one last week. So, >> yep. So, May 21st.

[00:00:24]>> Hello everyone. Hopefully you can hear us and see us and all of that good stuff. We'll be starting in just a moment.

[00:00:32]Big news today. All about surface.

[00:00:37]Yes. Once once time that was true big news in surface these days it's just oh we have to talk about surface surf the three surface I'm just reading some of the comments on the announcement post what the surfaces the top comment is but all of them are still running Windows 11 pass.

[00:01:11]Okay.

[00:01:11]>> You're like, "You can't afford Mac."

[00:01:13]Truth.

[00:01:17]>> That's what I'm going to tell all Linux people. You just can't afford a Mac.

[00:01:21]That's why you use Linux. You work at 7-Eleven.

[00:01:28]Okay. I've made this go anywhere.

[00:01:32]Okay. Um, sorry. I just got to set the message. Uh, I am not recording. Same.

[00:01:38]I'm joking. Yeah, I'm recording.

[00:01:42]Three, two, one.

[00:01:46]Welcome to the Windows Central podcast, episode 395 for May 21st, 2026.

[00:01:54]Hey everyone, Daniel Rabbino here, joining Zach Bowen for another exciting episode of the Windows Central podcast.

[00:01:59]We have a kind of a special drop episode going on here because yes, there were new Surface devices that came out this week or were announced and some reviews as well. So, we're just going to uh well, we're going to try to keep it to an hour. Uh just talking about the three new surfaces, uh where they're placed and what we expect for the consumer versions, as well as the review I did for the new laptop that came out and it's kind of a it's killer new feature at least. Uh, and then yeah, maybe we'll do some Q&A with you guys if uh you're in the audience. Uh, but yeah, I guess let's get to it. Zach, uh, why don't you just recap what was announced this week and then I guess more importantly, what wasn't announced.

[00:02:42]>> Yeah, so this week Microsoft unveiled its next wave of Surface for Business products. Unfortunately, that means there are no consumer uh devices that have been announced just yet. We know they are coming. As we've sort of talked about this before, Microsoft is planning a two-stage launch for its new service hardware this year. The consumer stuff is, I believe, in the second uh stage of this launch, which is supposed to happen over the summer. So, today it's all about the Surface for Business devices, and Microsoft unveiled three new refreshes of its business portfolio. The Surface Laptop flagship, aka the Surface Laptop 8, the Surface Laptop 13in, aka its mid-range Surface Laptop, and the Surface Pro 13in, aka the Surface Pro 12. So, uh, three devices. The the 12-in Surface Pro was not refreshed. Um, that is, like I said, coming likely in the second wave later this year as well. Uh, so we'll just focus on the actual products that were announced today, which is the the flagship Surface Laptop Pro 12 uh, and uh, laptop 13 in. And before we get into it, can we just talk about how confusing these names are because um, they are ridiculous. Surface Pro 12, not to be confused with Surface Pro 12 in. Surface Laptop 13in, not to be confused with Surface Laptop 13.8. 8 in which is an entirely different product. Uh it's just it's way too much.

[00:03:57]Their official names for the laptop 8 for example is Surface Laptop for business 13.8 and 15in eighth edition Intel.

[00:04:06]>> I like how they need to put Intel.

[00:04:09]>> Yes, >> even though there's not, as far as our knowledge going to be a Qualcomm version of the business laptop.

[00:04:15]>> Uh that might not necessarily be true.

[00:04:18]That could just come later. We don't we don't know how Microsoft is going to divvy up the the the chips this year with the last gen stuff. Yes, the Qualcomm stuff was historically consumer and the Intel stuff was historically business. I don't know if that's going to stick. That could that might change this year. It might be more of a it's just freefor all. Every skew is available on every consumer or commercial uh edition device. We don't know yet. But for now, it is just the Intel stuff. The Qualcomm stuff is coming later. Microsoft has confirmed that there will be Snapdragon products coming this summer. They're just not available yet. So, right now it's all about the Intel stuff. And yes, they are. Intel is in the name for these business devices. Um, and so yeah, I think we should probably start with the one that you've got in your hands down, the Surface Laptop eighth gen. Uh, I believe you were sent the 13.8 in, but Microsoft did refresh both the 13.8 and the 15-in flagships. Design-wise, more or less the same as the last gen, which is totally understandable given the laptop 7 was the first one to sort of push forward a new design for Surface Laptop. So, it's not a surprise to see Microsoft keeping with that design. This year is all about quality of life enhancements, display upgrades, haptics improvements, and more performance thanks to that new Intel chip. So, Dan, why don't you tell us about the uh the laptop 8?

[00:05:29]>> Yeah, you and I are both in agreement that the last gen designs for these devices were basically perfect. Yeah, I there are little little things I would like to see changed and stuff like that, but for all intents and purposes, you know, I was just Surface Laptop 7 to me is just like it's just awesome. Uh so what's new with Surface Laptop for business 8th edition Intel? Uh obviously, you know, the boring feature is the new Core Ultra 3 series chip. Uh but this is actually kind of special here. This is running the high-end H series chip, right? This is the fastest Panther Lake chip except for the X9, you know. So, this is the X7. Um, what used to be a Core i7 or Core i9, right?

[00:06:18]So, this doesn't have the X9 in it, but has the X7 in it. It's got 16 cores.

[00:06:23]>> Yeah.

[00:06:24]>> Which is pretty cool. That's catching up, you know, where Qualcomm is these days. Uh, and it has the more powerful B390 GPU on it, which when I did the benchmarks for, if I had to put into context, it's faster by a good margin than an RTX 3050, right? Um, so this is still not catching up to a discrete modern RTX uh GPU, but the 3050 is no slouch. I mean, it was a good midway GPU a couple years ago for gaming. Meaning, yeah, you can actually do some gaming on this, though it's not obviously it's a business laptop. It's not really meant for gaming, but you know, for editing video or doing heavier lifts. Yeah, this is the the B390 is actually Intel's, you know, Intel's been making headways with their chip designs, and one of their biggest stories has been GPUs. they've been actually really doing a good job with GPUs and this is sort of that like culmination of this. Uh so it's kind of cool to see here. So the performance has been really great and the SSD is super fast. I'm getting 7,000 megabytes per second for sequential read which is definitely on the high end, right? So the performance is great and it's not loud with the fans considering the uh thermal solutions that they use on this.

[00:07:49]Right? There's no bottom vents on a Surface Laptop. It's super cool. You can't see the vents. It actually comes in through the back where the lid is.

[00:07:57]Um, but because of that, there's not like a lot of air that goes in there, but they still can do enough where um, you know, when I'm doing Windows Update or something or running benchmarks, yeah, the fans will kick in, but even there, it's a nice whooshing sound that's pretty quiet. Like, it's actually not annoying or anything like that. and it only comes on when you're obviously pushing graphics really hard.

[00:08:19]If you're just doing normal day-to-day stuff, the fans completely inaudible.

[00:08:24]So, I'm really happy with that. Um, the big Oh, I would say the other thing, of course, is the haptic touchpad. Now, they did introduce that last year, so technically not new, but this is a new design that is mostly inhouse from what I was able to gather my conversations with Microsoft. And they really went out of their way so that the way it clicks, the tactile feel, and also the kind of audible like click it makes and all this, they tested it in their anooic chamber, which is the quietest anacoic chamber in the world. I've actually been in it. It's It's weird when they close the door on you because you can actually hear your own heartbeat. It's pretty strange. Um, but they did like a lot of testing there to make sure that this touchpad was like not annoying because some touchpads have a really loud click and all this. Um, so they improved all that. Perhaps the biggest deal is haptic signals is a new feature built into Windows 11 into the settings under the touchpad. And this is a new API that's going to be available for thirdparty app developers that gives you access to the haptic touchpad to do all sorts of cool things. Uh, so Microsoft built into Windows that when you hover over say the X on a window to close it, it makes like a little you get a little feedback. It's hard to describe. Uh, but it it feels like when you're hitting the X like you're running into something giving you a subtle just like, hey, you're on X versus being on say the minimize, right?

[00:09:54]Because you don't want to accidentally close out a window. So this is giving you a little signal there for It makes the digital world feel a little bit more real because it's kind of tactile. This also works when snapping windows. Uh we moving things in PowerPoints. They showed uh in Filora, which is a video editing app, that like when you're scrubbing videos and you're moving the cursor along the timeline, you can kind of feel it jumping around. And so developers will be able to do anything they want with it, which is something I've been asking for a long time because yeah, it's cool to have a haptic touchpad and simulate the current touchpad stuff, but you can do way more with it, right? And that's what they're doing now. So this is actually a cool feature. Would I go and buy a new laptop just because of that? Of course not. But this is going to be sort of the new standard going forward for new hardware.

[00:10:47]Now, I should point out on the Surface Pro, which was revamped as well, the Flex keyboard, despite having a haptic touchpad, doesn't get this feature, but the Surface Pen does. So, that's weird.

[00:11:01]So, there seems to be some sort of hardware bottom floor or requirements uh to enable this feature. And I'm going to try to dig around, get a little bit more information on that. But the biggest feature, which a lot of people actually probably won't care about, but it's super cool and I I really like it, is the e privacy screen, right? It's an electronic privacy screen. Now, if you're a consumer, you probably don't care about this, but for this audience, business, enterprise, government, this is actually a really big deal. So, yeah, you can buy a little screen protector and put it on and it'll do the same thing. But one that cuts down your brightness, cuts down your color accuracy. It only works from the sides.

[00:11:46]So if someone's actually on an airplane and behind you, they can still see your screen. And if they step up, they can see your screen, right? It's only for the sides. Um, and they just kind of suck. If you're taking it on and off, it's going to wear out. You're going to get fingerprints and dust on it. Like, it's just not a good experience. But if you only need it once in a while, sure.

[00:12:06]Easy, cheap solution. This is for people and professionals who are always working in public. They want to look at some maybe financial data. Maybe just their emails or you know maybe some documents and they don't want people seeing it.

[00:12:18]All you need to do now is is hit the F1 key and then the screen basically dramatically cuts down the viewing angles. And I should mention this is a specific skew. So not all these laptops have it. You have to order it. Uh it starts at 2500 bucks basically for that model. Um, this technology is very similar to what Samsung is using in the uh S26 Ultra, which is my daily phone, and I use that new privacy screen feature all the time as well. Uh, it's basically the wide narrow view LED uh scenario. So, there are a bunch of individual pixels on the display. Some are wide, some are narrow. when it's the uh privacy screen is um on or sorry off I believe all the pixels are on and then when you turn you hit F1 all the wides shut off so you get a little drop in brightness not a lot but it you do see a little bit of a dimming and then you just get narrow view pixels and they tested this also in labs like they basically recreated airplane seats and train seats in their labs and had people sitting and they made sure that you have someone's on the side of you basically that they can't read. I was sitting on the couch, my significant other, she was like, "I can't even see your screen anymore." And I was like, "I don't even have the privacy screen on." I'm like, "Watch this. F1, now you really can't see." Right? So, there's already like a naturally reduced visibility even when it is on um because there are because a lot of the pixels are narrow view, but yeah, when you turn this on, it really makes it hard to view. So, I like I said, I think this is a super cool feature. It's just F1 instant turns on and off. Uh this is also their first basically matte. They call it anti-glare, but it's basically a matte display. So it's combining two things, right? Um again, a lot of people don't like matte displays, but if you're in business, enterprise, government, it's I they're really good for your eyes. There is no glare. People don't realize that when there's a glare on the screen, what happens is your eye because you don't control the focus on your eye. It focuses on whatever you're looking at, right? And focusing on. If there are two things competing, right, your screen and then the glare of say a light or a person behind you, your eye basically is constantly jumping back and forth between those focal points and that causes eye fatigue over a long period of time. So, this diffuses that. You don't see it at all. Um, it's also really good for working outdoors. you can work in the sun because you're not going to be getting a lot of reflections on the screen. So, those are the u I would say the banner features. Everything else is basically the same on it. Uh obviously the prices have gone up, but I know people want to talk about that and we can, but at the same time, we've lit I keep telling people like we've been writing articles on this for six to eight months going laptop prices are going to go up and then people like they go up and be like, oh my god, look at the prices. It's like, yeah, I mean, it is what it is. Um, the my only downside with this laptop is the battery life is not as good as I want it to be. That's because it's got a relatively small 54watt hour battery in it. Um, you know, a lot of laptops when it hit the 70watt hour size, that's where you start to get into that like really good kind of battery life. Some go even higher than that. 54 watt hours. It's going to give you, from my experience, it feels like six to eight hours of solid working. Uh but yeah, it's not a ton. Other than that, you get the two type 4 USB uh sorry, USB 4 ports, uh type A, of course, and the Surface Connect is still there. They only ship with a 39watt hour charger, but that's kind of enough for this processor, but you can of course use a type-C 65 watt and get like really fast charging if you want. The only thing that's going to happen with that though, it's going to make the laptop hotter.

[00:16:17]That's the only I've noticed with the type-C charging, but it's there as an option and a pinch if you need it.

[00:16:23]>> Nice. Yeah, there are a couple of uh other changes uh specific to the 15-inch model. The 15-inch model now comes with a much higher resolution display, which is awesome to see, but you can't get it with the e privacy screen. So, this this this is the other issue with this new these new services is that >> you can't get everything on one. It seems it's like >> I literally had this conversation with them because me and Rich Woods over at XDA >> were saying the same thing. We're like, we want privacy screen, we want 5G, we want Qualcomm.

[00:16:52]>> Yeah.

[00:16:53]>> Like, we want all this stuff, but yeah, you can't get that. Right.

[00:16:56]>> Right. So the 15-in is the only model with the higher resolution screen and it's a significantly higher resolution.

[00:17:01]The the 13.8 uh sorry the 13.8 as well as the old 15inch one uh last gen model what had a PPI of 201. Uh this new 15 in has a PPI of 262. That's a huge jump up.

[00:17:13]It's a 3K display more or less now. And um it's a much higher pixel density. So it text will be much crisper, icons will look sharper, etc. etc. you get all those nice benefits going for the higher resolution 15-inch model now with the eighth gen, but like I said, you don't get that e privacy feature. And also, yes, as Dan mentioned, there's also no 5G on the on the eighth gen Surface laptop. So, the seventh gen Surface laptop is the one you have to go for if you want 5G. Uh if you want 5G on the eighth gen, you're out of luck. So, >> yeah, I actually got to play with the 5G laptop. Um it's actually a completely different laptop in a lot of way.

[00:17:48]>> Yes, it is. Yeah, the seventh gen. Yeah, it's completely different. It has almost like a rubberized deck on it. Like it's a soft touch deck. It's actually a really nice device, but yeah, you're gonna be on the the older one. That's because it's it does take a lot of effort to make a 5G device there. It's not just slapping in a modem. Um they have to the 5G antenna array you have to do in laptops is crazy. It's you have to put spaces all over the place for it.

[00:18:14]>> Yeah.

[00:18:14]>> So, I will say the text for the 13.8 8 in. Although they didn't change the resolution is sharper to me now. Um just because of probably the way those pixels work, but comparing it to laptop 7 with the glossy display, it looks stuff there looks a little bit more blurry uh when you get really close to it and want to look. So I think that's a nice improvement, but text looks really good on this one.

[00:18:41]>> Nice. So yeah, you also briefly mentioned the pricing there. Pricing has gone up. It now starts at 1,950 bucks for the entry level Surface Laptop 13.8.

[00:18:53]Um, obviously pricing will go higher than that for the higherend configurations. Uh, you can get this for example up to with 64 gigs of RAM, 2 terb of storage, etc., etc. Um, but the entry level model comes with Intel Core Ultra 5 uh 335 with 16 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage. Is it 256 or 512 for the entry? I can't remember. Either way, it's a lot of money for not a lot of spec. Um, and yeah, like I said, the pricing only goes up from there. And this is also the same for the the new flagship Surface Pro as well. The Surface Pro 12, uh, starts at the same price at 1,950 for a similar spec. Um, yeah, that's tough. That's not great.

[00:19:34]Um, and you know, as Dan mentioned, there's been lots of discussion about this online. The pricing is the pricing for a number of reasons. The main reason is these are for business customers and businesses historically are okay with paying more for their devices because they can usually get discounts if they buy in bulk etc etc. But there are other factors at play mainly of course the ongoing component uh uh pricing crisis.

[00:19:56]brand costs are through the roof right now and that's just causing Microsoft to have to charge more for these devices because unlike other brands from the likes of you know Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Surface is boutique in the sense that they don't move many units and so when Microsoft puts in an order for components they make smaller orders and smaller orders don't get as many discounts from the manufacturers who built the components and so Microsoft is already at a disadvantage because it's it doesn't just it just doesn't move enough Surface devices to be able to put in put in an sort of big enough where it can bring the costs down on things like RAM and storage right now. And so that's why these devices are so expensive.

[00:20:35]And the consumer models we do anticipate will be a bit cheaper than this. But uh by how much we don't yet know and also we don't know if Snapdragons the Snapdragon models will be even cheaper than the Intel ones. That could be possible. We just don't know at this time. I should also point out that the pricing I get it's high but comparatively to where the rest of the PC industry is going and people are going to bring up Apple. I'll talk about them in a second but comparatively they're not out of the ballpark here. So um you know Lenovo just has now the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 coming out and in fact we'll probably getting a review for that soon too. Now that laptop obviously pushes the extremes on lightness. It's like 2.2 2 pounds. So, it's a lot lighter and stuff like that.

[00:21:19]But that that laptop, their flagship business device basically um starts at $1850.

[00:21:29]So, it's a $100 cheaper. So, you're like, "Ah, see, it's $100 cheaper." But that $100 cheaper, you're only getting the URE processor, right?

[00:21:38]>> Not the powerful H series with this B390 GPU. Um, and it only has a full HD display, not the higher 2Kish. Yeah.

[00:21:48]Right. So, it's it quickly goes up.

[00:21:51]Actually, more expensive than Surface laptops. So, I'm just saying, and you're right, uh, enterprise laptops, one, they're paying for the Pro license, so it's an extra $100 right there. Uh, two, they're paying for usually extended support and warranty, uh, which is not something for consumers. They tend to have specialized hardware. There's a bunch of specialized security hardware.

[00:22:12]I actually talk about it in a review that this laptop has that consumers just wouldn't really care about, but it does.

[00:22:20]Um, and yeah, when companies buy in bulk, they get discounts. I actually see this. I have a Amazon business account and I could be buying like vitamins and be like, "Oh, vitamin C. All right, that'll be $1249." It's like, if you buy 500, it'll be this much cheaper. I'm like, okay, this the downside of being a business, but like yeah, buying in bulk reduces. Now, getting to Apple, Apple strategically bought a lot of RAM in 2025 in anticipation of this being that they're a preferred customer uh for Samsung and HK uh Skynex. Uh they get first in line. They get to dib and basically buy everything as well as buy it for cheaper, right? Uh at those prices. They did that. So that helps them. If you're wondering like, well, why is a Microsoft do that? Well, Microsoft, honestly, Surface laptops are at least 1% or less probably of all PCs.

[00:23:18]It's not a a big market. They get it gets a lot of attention, but it doesn't sell a lot of devices, right? So, their volume, they just don't get to they don't get first in line, first of all, to even buy this stuff. And when they do, they're not going to buy that much, right? Um, second, Apple historically charges you a lot of money for upgrades, whether it's RAM or storage. They charge you like $400. It can actually be uh often 400% the actual market cost.

[00:23:47]Everybody knows this when these laptops come out. It's just like, oh, but if I want 512, it's an extra $400 or $500, right? Uh so they gouge you on all those things. And now when it comes to some scarcity, they have those margins to work with and people are like, "Oh, Apple's the good guy." It's like, "Yeah, but they've been overcharging you the whole time and now they're using some of those margins in their favor." I mean, good for them. I'm not saying it's, you know, for consumers, it's still a good deal. I'm just trying to explain the market here, you know, and I would also say that one, this that could end. they will eventually have to buy more memory if this memory stuff doesn't >> fix itself or if new technology comes out they will either have to not adopt it so everybody will be on LP DDR6 and they'll be like oh no we still use five yeah because they bought a bunch of fives then people will be like well we don't really need six you know um so that can happen and the other thing of course is technically they could probably eat into their revenue uh margins for laptop, right? Uh or for all their MacBooks for for that case. So that when they report their um quarterly earnings, it'll be less, right? Um and they can do that, but that's not something that investors like to see, but they could have those margins to kind of play around with. But even they're going to have to, you know, face this situation eventually. So, it's not completely apples to apples in surface, as we've said before, they need to be competitively priced, but people are like, they should just go up against Apple. Here's the thing. Yeah, they kind of can and try to do Apple stuff, but they went hard against Apple. It's not just Apple that they're going up against. They're going up against all their OEM partners who are then competing also with Apple, meaning HP, Dell, Lenovo, whoever. And those companies are going to get upset like why is Microsoft keep undercutting us, you know? So, they have to do a very fine balance here. They got to sell just enough to keep everything going, but they also can't bury HP Lenovo and trying to win points against Apple, which let's be honest, the only people who care about this are listening to this podcast and people on the internet.

[00:26:11]Normal people don't care about any of this stuff. So, that's all I'll have to say that.

[00:26:16]>> Yeah. Yeah. No, you're totally right.

[00:26:17]The pricing is is a big shock when you look at it first. Again, these other business models and businesses, as we've discussed, are more likely to be able to sort of eat that cost. This is a conversation we can revisit when the consumer devices are announced because that's when the comparison really makes sense when we look at say Apple's lineup or Dell or Lenovo or HP's uh flagship lineup. Um, so let's move on from the laptop 8 onto the Surface Pro 12, the 12th edition 13in. Um, more or less the same story here. It's an identical device with a couple of minor improvements. So obviously we do have the new Intel Core Ultra series 3 chips powering things under the hood now except there's no X option. So this is just the standard Intel Core Ultra series chips. No um higherend X variants like we found on the laptop um 13.8 and 15. Uh and that's likely for power reasons. It Microsoft is touting much longer battery life on the Surface Pro 12 versus the Surface Pro 11, which is nice to see. And you can also get it with double the RAM now up to 64 gigs of memory versus 32 on the last gen. Uh and 5G is now available in more configurations. One of the problems with the last gen Surface Pro 11 was that you could only find 5G on one or two of the spec or the configurations. 5G is now available on a lot more configurations which is really cool to see. Still have the same LCD and OLED options. No um e privacy option on the Pro 12 12th edition. God, I keep giving you the name. Surface 12th edition doesn't have the e privacy screen, but it does have an anti-reflective coating on the display, which is nice. Um, and that's basically it for the Surface Pro 12th edition. It has the same accessories, the exact same flex keyboard, not being updated. Surface Slim Pen 2 is still the current and latest version of the Surface Slim Pen, which is fully compatible with the Surface Pro 12th edition. Some people were kind of hoping that maybe Microsoft would adopt the 12-in design for the the bigger 13-in 12th edition. Uh but um no that didn't happen. So you still need the flex keyboard if you want to charge the slim pen. There is no built-in wireless charging for that like on the cheaper 12inch Surface Pro. But as I said going into this to the briefing, I was like, "Oh, I'll take the Surface Pro for a review because I love the Surface Pro.

[00:28:28]It's my favorite device." Yeah.

[00:28:29]>> So I was just like, "Okay." Plus got anti-reflective. Sure. I went in there and I saw the Surface Laptop with that privacy screen. So I'm like, "Oh, okay.

[00:28:36]That's the actual real interesting story." Yeah.

[00:28:39]>> And same with the haptic touchpad. But yeah, not a lot of changes there. So, but like I said, >> I I don't think the Pro needs a lot of changes. That's kind of really all they could do, you know, like in my opinion.

[00:28:51]Like I don't know what else I wanted out of that device. So, >> absolutely. Yeah, it's that form factor is more or less perfected. The only changes as we've discussed before is maybe a bit thinner, maybe a bit lighter and uniform bezels. that's sort of where they can go next for that device, but nothing, >> you know, hugely necessary at this point.

[00:29:09]>> Uh, and then we have the Surface Laptop 13in first edition Intel.

[00:29:14]>> So, this is Microsoft was supposed to be Microsoft's mid-range Surface Laptop.

[00:29:17]Obviously, when it launched for consumers last year, it launched with Snapdragon X Plus, 16 gigs of RAM, and 256 GB of storage for $8.99. And at the time, we we were like, this is kind of a bit expensive for what this offers, but it it it was what it was. Unfortunately, because of the component crisis, prices have gone up considerably. The business edition of that laptop was uh 1,100 when it launched and then I think it went up quite a bit a couple months back when Microsoft was forced to bump prices of Surface across the board.

[00:29:45]>> Yeah.

[00:29:45]>> This new Surface laptop 13inch first edition with Intel is uh starts at 1,500 bucks now. Uh, and that's with Intel Core Ultra 5 16 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage for the same low resolution slightly 1080pish the 13inch display with that same keyboard trackpad and chassis like the the design and feature set is more or less identical. It's just the chip upgrade and that is is noticeable in this new device uh for the 13-inch model. Uh Microsoft has announced that later this year they will make available a model with 8 gigs of RAM and that's the first time Microsoft is going to be doing that on a Surface device since 2024. Uh since the Copilot Plus PC stuff, all Surface PCs have been mandated uh to have at a minimum 16 gigs of RAM so that they can be copilot plus PC uh compatible. Uh this new Surface Lapel 13in will break that trend. It will be the first device Micros shipped since Copilot Plus PC launch launched uh that does not meet the C-Pilot Plus PC requirements and thus isn't a C-pilot Plus PC. With 8 gigs of RAM, it will be cheaper but not much cheaper. It will be $1,299.

[00:30:53]Um so still very expensive for a laptop with 8 gigs of RAM. But again, these are for the these are business edition SKs.

[00:31:00]We don't yet know how much these are going to cost for consumers. It's very possible that this could be $200, even $300 cheaper than that if it's a Snapdragon X2 Plus or whatever with 8 gigs. Well, so here's the here's the question. Will there be a gig?

[00:31:14]>> Will they do an 8 gig with the Snapdragon? don't know if they will because I don't know if that SOC even supports.

[00:31:19]>> Yeah, my guess with this version, they don't do stuff like completely in secret, meaning that their uh business partners, companies that buy these in bulk, they talk to them.

[00:31:35]They're they have reps, right? And they're like, "What do you want? What did you like about this? Where can we improve?" They take all that information and they go back, you know, like the privacy screen is probably something like something that came up in conversation that they would because HP's been doing that for a long time.

[00:31:51]They're called Sher View. Lenovo technically has it too. I've never actually seen it, but you can on very select devices order as a specific configuration. So, they wanted something there, you know, but my guess is for this 8 gig version, either one or two things. one customers were like, "We need this price point and now's the only way they can get down to it." Or customers were like, "We're fine with the 8 gig. We don't really care. We just want that option." I know people here complain about 8 gig, but I've used 8 gig. I've used 4 gig devices. Depends what you're doing on it. If you're doing web, email, work, slack, all this teams, 8 gigs is fine, actually. Uh, if you're trying to edit video, if you're trying to edit audio, if you're doing photo editing, sure, but that's not this laptop anyway. This is a small, this is literally an email machine. Um, and you could ask like, why do you need just get a Chromebook then? But, you know, has to do with it, has to do with specific software that companies have. Um, you know, when you get a business laptop and it's set up through your company, they're going to preconfigure it. They have special software. we have to deal with this all the time. So that that's the reality of this stuff. But >> yeah, I don't know if they're going to need to do that for the consumer version, but yeah, and pricing should be >> at least $100 cheaper because of the licensing.

[00:33:15]>> Um, but I would be I would expect at least $200 cheaper because of the Qualcomm.

[00:33:22]>> Yeah, just the way you would hope. Um, so yeah, I guess the only other new thing about the 13-in Surface laptop is that the fact that it has Intel is is new for this device. Last gen, obviously the even the business model was Qualcomm exclusive. So this is the first time Intel is made available on Microsoft's mid-range 13-in Surface Laptop, which is fun to see. Um, and that's pretty much it. So it does come down to, you know, who who who are these devices for? It's for enterprises. Microsoft touts people like people work in retail, manufacturing, uh, receptionists, office work, you know, all sorts of that sort of workflow, these devices are perfect for.

[00:34:03]Starting with that 13-inch Surface laptop with 8 gigs of RAM. If you're somebody who is, you know, receptionist, that device is probably perfectly fine for you. um all the way up to the flagship 15-inch Surface laptop which is being targeted more towards creatives and people who work in higher more intense programs like Premier Pro or data crunching software whatever that may be those are the people that these devices are currently targeting and it's mostly commercial/enterprise individuals if you are somebody who is desperately in need of a new service and you have the money you can go out and buy one of these if you want as an individual you don't have to be a business to do that if you just go to Microsoft store you will find these devices. It's not hard. You can place an order, they will arrive. And well, Dan, yours came in a nice sort of retail box, right, with like, you know, white box and stuff. In the past, the the commercial models never did. So, perhaps that's changed and now the commercial devices are coming in in nicer packaging. But originally, the commercial ones would come like a ugly brown box that you just opened and the device was there. Okay, cool. But it sounds like they might be reconsidering that for this wave of commercial hardware. Um in regards to what's next for the the wave two, as far as we are aware, we are still expecting um basically all these devices to be reannounced with Qualcomm. We are expecting them to have a uh more consumerfacing focus, which essentially means I I don't expect to see the e privacy screen on the consumer models.

[00:35:26]The anti-reflective stuff may be there and stuff. Um, obviously the higher resolution screen on the 15-in will likely be there as well, but um, I don't expect the e- privacy uh, option to make its way over to the consumer models. We are hearing that OLED is on the table for the Surface Laptop consumer variants and so that'll be fun to see on the Surface Laptop as well. Um, obviously Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Plus and Elite.

[00:35:52]Uh we are not expecting any Elite Extreme options for the consumer Surface laptops or even the commercial ones. As far as I'm aware, Elite Extreme, for some reason Microsoft has not chosen to include that in the lineup this year. Uh so if you was hoping for that, unfortunately, you'll be waiting uh quite a while. And we are also expecting a 12 uh Surface Pro 12in refresh with likely Snapdragon X2 as well as Intel. I have heard there is an Intel model that should ship at some point this year. And I've also heard that they were prototyping a 5G version of the Surface Pro 12 in. I'm not entirely sure if that's expected to ship this year or or you know in the second wave over this summer, but um that is something that they are working on and so that is potentially on the new horizon for later this year if things go well. Um and yeah, it's all going to come down to pricing with these consumer models. A lot of people online are kind of worried that this feels like Microsoft is like sort of backing out from hardware or at the very least no longer taking hardware that as seriously enough to want to sort of fight to keep these devices uh at a lower cost. You know, one of the reasons why Apple was able to keep the devices as low as they as their costs are like the MacBook Air and stuff is because they got ahead of the price c uh the component pricing crisis. They secured deals. They saw it coming. Same with Lenovo, Dell, HP. Lenovo Dell HP all have great sort of flagship laptops that give the MacBook Air a run for its money at the MacBook Air pricing.

[00:37:14]Surface sort of missed that because Microsoft I guess wasn't hungry enough to secure those deals and therefore they just sort of let the prices price increase happen and they were like uh oh now we've got to place orders for new devices and we have to pay extra for it because we didn't look ahead in time and figure out that we need to buy this stuff up early so that we can prepare for the next wave. And so that's led some people to think, you know, what is Microsoft kind of is their heart still in it when it comes to hardware? I think it is. I think their priority for Surface has changed and I think enterprise and commercial is now their number one focus for this sort of hardware, which is why you're seeing Microsoft launch these devices first for commercial. I believe that that they now build these devices for commercial customers and then create consumer variants from that. uh which means the consumer stuff is afterthought a wrong word but it's no longer like the the driving force you know when you know service on the panels was very much a personal computing type product line panels wanted to build devices for people I think the new surface current surface is more interested in building the best device for businesses and I mean that lines up with what Microsoft sort of is these days right and you can really see that with this launch I was very I guess disappointed with how Microsoft announced these devices it's you a blog post focusing on business customers, you know.

[00:38:35]>> Well, yeah, but like, you know, there aren't that many new features, right? These are mid-stream upgrades basically.

[00:38:44]>> But Apple Apple does events where they just like, hey, M5 here. It's the same laptop, it now has M5 and then they talk about M5 half an hour >> again. It's different reach, you know, like we just said like Surface doesn't sell that much. Never has, you know. Um, and I keep reminding people up about this. They're like, "Bring back Surface Book and do Surface Laptop Studio."

[00:39:03]Listen, I love those devices. They're I gave them great reviews. They were fun to use, but one, a lot of tech reviewers had issues with them and did not like them. And two, none of you bought them.

[00:39:17]That's all it came down to. They didn't they weren't like, "So, Super Surface Laptop Studio sold incredibly well.

[00:39:22]Better beat expectations. Let's not make anymore." That's not like what happened, you know? And so I I know it sucks, but like what do you want? You know, people just aren't buying these things, so they got to cut back. Um, so I know people want the innovation. They want the old penos days. And I miss that stuff, too. And ideally, I would like that, but at the end of the day, they are technically a business. They can't just keep losing money on stuff. Um, I did have some good off thereord conversations. I won't tell you the people I spoke with, but it was the Surface team about this stuff and they definitely seemed were signaling to me that they're going to have other devices that it's not just this. It doesn't mean it's something's coming out in six months. And to be honest, and I've said this before, they shouldn't release new like SKUs and or like many new devices in 2026. It's a terrible year.

[00:40:16]>> Yeah.

[00:40:17]>> Prices are through the roof. We just did a whole segment about it, right? So, they're gonna even when they have like cool devices, people are going to be like, "Oh, it's too expensive." You know, so like why get that RAM tax? The RAM stuff's supposed to come back down in 2027.

[00:40:31]Fingers crossed, you know? So, that would be a better time, I would think, if they're going to launch some new stuff um to make that happen. So, they should definitely just make this a low-key year because it's going to be lowkey for PC sales. It's yeah, I think it was predicted it's going to be like minus 16% or something like that. It's going to be no one's going to be buying these things. So like why go out of your way hold a big thing and like it's going to be crickets, right? Um I am curious about the enterprise first and then consumer later if that was some strategic shift or was that just because they couldn't source enough Qualcomm chips um and Intel was there first.

[00:41:11]Maybe they had more um usually when you work with enterprise and stuff like that, you line up customers who are eager to get your new thing and so maybe they just had more customers that were guaranteed sales basically lined up whereas consumers are like who knows who knows if they're going to buy the thing, right? They don't there's no guaranteed sale there. So, it will be interesting to see if this is the new way they do this or is this just a one-off because we know the Qualcomm stuff has also been having issues. Like the X2 Elite, there's like two variants of the Elite at least. Uh, one of them is like the 5 gigahertz version, but it's like oh, sorry, the the Elite Extreme. Uh, there's like one version that's the actual 5 gigahertz model and it's like impossible to find. Uh, and the Elite Extreme is like in one laptop. uh the ASUS Zenbuk A16. Is that because ASUS has an exclusive deal?

[00:42:07]Maybe. I don't know. Is it just because they that's a high yield chip that's really hard to to make? Uh probably, you know, and so there could be a lot of factors going on there. But when I was talking to him off the record, they did.

[00:42:22]And the reason I'm optimistic, they literally asked me what I would want them to do, like what kind of devices would I want? And I've I think I mentioned this on a previous podcast, but if not, I'll just say I argued for the Surface Pro Plus, uh, which Zach has hinted that they've been considering in the past. Anyway, I said, "Give me a 14 12 inch Surface Pro. You can make it thinner because you're basically stretching it out. give me a bigger display because I'm getting old and like I want a a larger display. They were like they seemed very interested in that idea. They're like go on go on you know.

[00:43:01]So between what Zach has reported and like what I was saying they at least seemed like that would be a cool thing to do. Wink, you know. And then the other one I argued for I think is pretty basic too and we've been saying it for years. They also seemed like interesting Surface Laptop Pro, right? Just a service laptop, a little bit thicker, bigger battery, put a GPU in there.

[00:43:24]Yeah, >> that's it. That's all you got to do. Um, don't need to do laptop studio. I would love to for laptop studio, by the way. I thought that was a great laptop. Um, >> or or bring back laptop studio, just don't have it the studio, right? Just keep the whole >> modify the chassis and just the screen is just a normal screen. That would be totally fine, too, you know? But to both ideas, they seemed receptive and like, oh yeah, okay, you know, maybe um you know, we joked around a few of us do a phone again, >> but that's just obviously not going to happen. Dual screen foldables, you know, I we've seen companies experiment with that. Hasn't really gone very far.

[00:44:08]Granted, Asus just released their new uh was it the Zenbook? Yeah, ZenBook Duo uh dual screen gaming laptop and we actually gave it a good review. It actually is one of the first dual screen PCs that actually makes sense. So there I think there's hope there. It would be cool to see them do it. Don't get me wrong. It won't sell.

[00:44:31]I just it just won't I don't think the amount of R&D that they would put into it would I think they would rather have their OEM partners take that risk. So, and I don't really blame them. Don't forget there's new people now in charge of Surface, right?

[00:44:46]>> Yes. It is almost an entirely new team as well, as far as I'm aware.

[00:44:50]>> Yeah. And so, those people aren't going to come in there like, "All right, how can we sync this program, >> which is already kind of skating on thin ice a little bit. Let's go, you know, we'll greenlight six new devices, make them super expensive, super groundbreaking, and then we'll watch as they don't sell and we lose a bunch of money. and then I'll go back to my boss and explain all that. Like, you're not gonna want to do that. You know, if you're put in charge of Surface, at least for a couple quarters, you're gonna be like, "Let's play it safe.

[00:45:20]Let's focus on our strengths."

[00:45:22]>> Yeah.

[00:45:23]>> Yeah.

[00:45:24]>> I was going to say like this new Surface was born out of one goal, and it was to make Surface profitable. Up until 2023, Surface was just blowing money away, just doing whatever they wanted. And I think the eventually Microsoft was like, "Guys, come on. Can you like build something that's going to make money?"

[00:45:38]And that's what you're seeing today.

[00:45:40]Surface today is a very conservative, very refined, very sensible, very um play it safe product line that they are the the devices they bring to market.

[00:45:50]They hope that it will make money like that, you know, that's the intention of these new devices. The intention behind them is to make money for the company.

[00:45:57]And so that's why Surface is, you know, it comes across a bit more boring these days, a little more sensible, a little more serious. Um but that's by design.

[00:46:04]The company was g the company gave surface a goal and that was to become profitable and that's what we're hope ideally seeing now. Now obviously the prices increases and stuff might be throwing a wrench into those plans but that's why the hardware is the way it is now because that's >> co threw a wrench in people's plans too for hardware.

[00:46:22]>> Yeah.

[00:46:23]>> These things happen right uh they'll weather the storm and that's what it is right now. We're we're doing the same thing right as a website. We have to weather this storm with Google uh as they change their algorithms all the time. So, companies go through periods where it's like, let's just bant her down. But that said, Surface Laptop and Surface Pro are no doubt some of my favorite Windows devices. I the Surface Laptop, excellent keyboard, excellent touchpad, really good audio, really good web camera, really nice display now with a privacy screen option, solid weights, the performance is great. Battery life could be better on the Intel version, but on the Qualcomm version, you're going to get that, right? like they're just excellent. The Surface Pro Surface Pro is basically perfect. The Flex Keyboard exceeded my expectations. Didn't ask for any of that stuff. Love having it. It's so cool. Um the design is great. I even forget how thin it is when I see it in person. Even though I have one here on my floor, when I'm seeing it like in another environment, I'm like, "Oh, wow.

[00:47:25]That's a really nice looking device." Um they're basically perfect devices. And like I don't know what else, you know, this idea that >> the online people are like, "Oh, no, it's got to be new and all this." It's like, "Yeah, but >> you're not buying it, right?"

[00:47:39]>> Yeah. I I I think I think Microsoft was able to get away with it so long because they had those weird and wacky form factors surrounding those like the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro have been around for such a long time, almost a decade for the laptop and more than a decade for the Pro. But you know for when panels was in charge, yes they did the Surface Pro laptop every year, but they also did things like the Surface Book and the laptop studio and the Surface Studio and the Surface Hub and headphones and Duo. Like there was there was interesting stuff happening around the bread and butter products, but now all the interesting stuff's gone. The focus is entirely on the bread and butter products. People get bored and they're like, "This isn't interesting."

[00:48:13]>> Yeah. I want the old Surface where you were doing, you know, two display devices and headphones with dials on them and stuff. Like that's what people miss about Surface.

[00:48:22]>> So, like I said, for all the people who are saying that, there were 10 others who no matter what they did were saying uh it's overpriced, no one's going to buy it and all this. Like I feel like there's just such reticence of like everything was perfect with Surface.

[00:48:37]Like Surface Book actually had like a lot of issues when it launched.

[00:48:40]>> It did. Yeah.

[00:48:42]a lot of issues like it wasn't it was a very bumpy ride for a lot of this stuff.

[00:48:48]I think people forget it.

[00:48:49]>> Yeah. Do you remember um I don't remember the name of that magazine or company the consumer something company they rated consumer reports that's it.

[00:48:57]They were like just completely unrecommended surface entirely >> for a while and that was a big problem for Microsoft for a long time. It took a while for >> Microsoft to fix that problem with consumer reports but they did in the end. Um, in our comments, Ben Court DM says, "Pixel has actually been having year-over-year increases in market share. Uh, still small but growing." Oh, right. Because someone else was responding back to that. Um, it's it is small and growing. And despite how good the pixels have gotten, it's still an incredibly like the pixels are like Linux where it's every year, this is it. This is the one. This is it.

[00:49:35]This is the one that's going to catch on. And and they really haven't. And I still hate their tensor core chips. I think they their tensor core chips are really good on all the AI and cool bells and whistles, which I appreciate pixels.

[00:49:46]I think as an actual CPU sucks. Uh my S26 Ultra just crushes any Pixel when it comes to performance and the the heat issues that they have with them, the 5G slowdowns, you know. But I there's something about the Pixel I do appreciate. I I've had five of them. Um, but like look at the look at the 10 compared to the nine.

[00:50:09]>> What was the big change?

[00:50:11]>> Right. So, they do that stuff too, right? And everybody's like, "Oh, now this year it's going to change up again.

[00:50:16]They're have some like aren they got some like LED thing on the back that lights up like nothing phone." Um, but the the original point was I guess Google has the same situation with Microsoft. Their Pixel phones are not really selling a lot, but their software Android is in billions of devices. Uh, and that's true. Then he says, "Wows and Surface is dying." That's not true. Now, I can't speak to Surface sales. Um, I think they're good enough that they're continuing stuff. We just said they're doing well with enterprise, which is one reason maybe why they went enterprise first this time because it's guaranteed customers. Uh, so I think they're actually doing well there. I think with the consumer stuff, it's going to be hard to judge anyway because this is a terrible year. Consumers just aren't buying laptops anyway. But, um, is Windows dying? Going by stat counter, they were the only operating system that went up uh in the last few months. Now, a lot of that's because of the Windows 10 stuff maybe, but this is all Windows.

[00:51:12]It's counting. Um Mac OS, Linux, all that actually dipped a little bit. Um now, that's just a couple months, right?

[00:51:22]Long-term trend, Windows has been kind of going down a little bit lower, but they've all been kind of doing that.

[00:51:28]this idea that Mac OS is taking over the world. Get off of Twitter, dude. Like, it's just not happening. Now, granted, Neo, you know, there's a report Kansas City schools are going to replace like thousands of their laptops, Chromebooks and Windows ones with the uh Neo.

[00:51:48]You know, we'll see. you know that might help things for Mac but there it's not like operating systems for desktop is a very flat effectively flat category that only sees some quarterly rises and some quarterly but Linux is not doing a Kshape Mac OS is not doing a K shape and then Windows is d it's not like that go look up the data yourself if you don't believe me you can go to stat counter and check it but uh Windows isn't dying what has happened is computing got huge and there's a lot of diversification now. So like one of the things that actually did go up if you look at stat counter is unknown. Unknown though is things like people using Brave browser and stuff that doesn't give browser ID tags because this is how they track the only way you can really track operating system uh density. But that also includes edge devices. So things that are connected to the internet that technically are running an operating system but don't fall into something like that. There's also China who has obviously been shunned by Google, Microsoft. So now they're building all their own operating system. So that's also an unknown. So you're seeing that stuff rise. But what you're really seeing is Android, Chrome, the new Chrome Android coming out. You have Mac OS, you have iPad OS, you have iOS, you have like thousands of operating systems and they're all kind of overlapping each other in terms of usage, right? Some people are just like, I don't need a laptop. I have an iPad and a phone. So, it's like, what does that say then about desktop for Mac OS, right? Well, it doesn't help Mac OS, but technically it's an Apple product. So, you know, um, so that's what's happened in the world.

[00:53:32]But this idea that like Windows is cratering, that's made up. Uh, there's no evidence for it. Uh if you look at the Steam numbers it, you know, Steam's own hardware survey, Windows is absolutely killing it. Um Linux goes up a little, down a little, but it's none of this stuff is seeing like massive shifts. But this is just because we live in a terminally online culture now. People just retweets all day and you're like, well, that's reality because I saw some guy said it on Twitter and that's what I'm going to believe now.

[00:54:06]Yeah. Is Windows S mode still a thing?

[00:54:11]>> Uh, technically yes, but you'll be pressed to find it. Uh, it doesn't ship on many devices anymore. It's mostly low-end devices you'll find it on. And it's not really a dedicated screen anymore. It is just a mode that sits on top of Windows Home as far as I'm aware.

[00:54:24]So, yeah, you won't you won't find it on many devices.

[00:54:28]The Surface Neo was going to be a good device. Now, Asus ZenBook Duo champions the form factor as Miss Opportunity.

[00:54:36]Hard disagree. Hard hard disagree on this. Zach, would you like to reiterate the specs and data points on Surface Neo?

[00:54:48]>> Intel Lakefield uh slow >> cancel chip by the way.

[00:54:52]>> Cancel cancel chip. Uh eight four gigs of RAM. I believe there was at one point a consideration for that. Four gigs of RAM. Uh high resolution displays but Windows 10X. It was slow. It was it ran hot. It didn't have great battery life.

[00:55:06]Um, but it was thin and super >> And it was tiny.

[00:55:08]>> And it was tiny. Nine in Yeah. 9 in display. So, it was essentially a 9 in laptop.

[00:55:12]>> Uh, when you had it in the clam shell laptop mode, uh, which was insane.

[00:55:17]>> Don't get me wrong, beautiful hardware.

[00:55:19]I mean, just top-notch engineering. It really like it was weird holding it was basically holding two pieces of glass together with the beautiful hinge. Um, and it was cool. Would it have sold well and done well? No. Absolutely. I don't think it would have. Uh I think one I think it's too small for a lot of people. I think the battery life would have been terrible. It was running a special version of Windows which got rid of the x86 apps or rather they ran like an didn't they run an emulation or something like that? What was that deal with that?

[00:55:49]>> They ran in they ran in in an emulation layer essentially. Yeah.

[00:55:52]>> Yeah. And so like no Neo would have been a bomb. It would have been a very expensive bomb. I would have loved to have seen it like ship, don't get me wrong. It would have been fun to play with. There's absolutely no way I don't think that device would have caught on if we lived in a cooler world and Windows had taken a different trajectory. Maybe ZenBook Duo is just a completely different device though. Like that one runs like has a 5090 GPU in it.

[00:56:18]It's a full-on gaming laptop. Uh it's a completely different device. It's so no lost opportunity there at all.

[00:56:26]>> Yeah. Uh right. I think that's probably about that for the Surface news. We should probably wrap up the episode.

[00:56:32]>> Yeah.

[00:56:33]>> Um, so yeah.

[00:56:35]>> Okay. Yeah. Uh, we can stick around and do some more questions with people, but other than that, we'll be back. Uh, we'll probably do our other show, Control Alt Discuss, next week if you guys want to join in for that. But as always, you follow me on Twitter, Daniel_ino, and follow Zachb Wdeen as well there and ask us questions. As always, thanks for listening and we'll talk to you later.

[00:56:54]Take care, everyone.

[00:56:58]>> Awesome. So yeah, if you have any questions, do put them in the chat.

[00:57:00]We'll hang around and do some do our best to answer them.

[00:57:05]Do you think Surface consu consumer devices will skip Surface Laptop 8 and Surface Pro 12? Like consumers skip service 10. Uh I don't know. I don't think so. I think this is getting really confusing at this point. Um >> you got to get past >> Yeah.

[00:57:19]>> 12 and 11.

[00:57:22]>> Yeah, I think not. I think at this because Microsoft is already de devaluing the the additions already.

[00:57:29]like they don't actually technically call them laptop 8 and pro 12. It's Surface Laptop and Surface Pro and then in brackets 12th edition or eighth edition. So, I can't imagine rank is going to do 9inth edition for the laptop and 13th edition for the uh >> um Pro. I think they're just going to keep it as is. It's just getting confusing otherwise. It's just no point.

[00:57:47]There's no point. And also, I don't believe the reason why they did that for the consumer stuff is because uh for laptop 7 and Pro 11 is because they were different enough, right? The laptop 6 was a completely different device from the laptop 7 and the pro 10 was sorry the pro 10 and pro 11 were a lot closer together but the the corecom stuff really elevated the pro 11 way ahead of the pro 10 um this time around that there isn't that big of a difference between the commercial and consumer stuff so I think they will retain the same names.

[00:58:15]>> Uh would you consider to wait purchasing a new computer considering the vastly increased prices? Uh, it's a good question. A little hard to answer because I don't know your specific needs or requirements. I would argue depending on what you're looking for, there's still some previous last gen stuff out, whether we're talking gaming laptops or super thin ultrabooks, Qualcomm devices that are still around that you could probably find for decent prices. I've been arguing for a while that the Snapdragon X series, it's sort of like Apple's M1.

[00:58:53]Like I got Surface Laptop 7 with Qualcomm. If I was that was my main device and I was a consumer, would I be rushing out or eager to buy Surface Laptop 8 if I was on a budget? No way.

[00:59:04]Um it's fast enough for what I there's absolutely nothing wrong with that chip.

[00:59:09]Like it's it's fast. It could last me years. I have no problems with it. um where sometimes you would have that with Intel chips, you know, like, oh, the performance is good, but the battery life wasn't great, and vice versa, right? They always kind of have that back and forth with that. Um, you're getting really good battery life, really good performance. So, if you can find devices like that, like if you can still find a ZenBook A14 with the Snapdragon X1 chip in it, I would get that personally if you can find it for a decent price. if that's not something you want to do. Yeah. I mean, but you're not going to see I don't think prices drop until like mid 2027. Like I think it's still a bit far off. Um and it also depends on how badly this hurts the PC industry. Let's say like they're predicting like minus 16% or something like that, right? Let's say that doesn't happen. And like this is what's happened previously. consumers are just like, "Oh, well, we'll just buy it and say it's like up 1% or 2% or something like that." Then the OEM suddenly be like, you know, we don't really need to reduce these prices. People are buying them anyway, right? Um because that's what's kind of happened with everything else in life. Um so that's kind of my advice. I don't know. Zach, do you have anything any tips there?

[01:00:26]>> Uh for what was that? Sorry, I was writing an email >> for the Would you buy a new laptop today? Uh, I would probably buy a lastg laptop today if you can still find them new stockwise because they're great. Um, the, you know, the Snapdragon X Plus or Elite first gen, awesome devices like the laptop 7. If you can get a good discount on laptop 7, I would 100% go for that over something brand new with current silicon for, you know, almost double the price in some cases.

[01:00:58]Do you think Microsoft will extend Windows 10 update with a still 28% market share?

[01:01:05]>> No.

[01:01:06]I do not. I certainly don't.

[01:01:12]>> Do you think Microsoft will venture back into the mobile space?

[01:01:16]>> I feel like Microsoft needs a presence.

[01:01:18]>> We all agree. It's it's a tough pill to swallow. Um I just don't see I don't see how, >> especially not right now. It's just not a good time to launch new hardware.

[01:01:30]>> Microsoft would be better served trying to push into what is undoubtedly the next hardware paradigm, wearables, glasses, whatever it may be, pendants, AI hardware >> or some kind of AI mobile operating system.

[01:01:43]>> Yeah, something like that. They would be better served trying to break into that market. But even there, Microsoft's history is like they'll make a really cool nextgen AI operating system and it'll be too far ahead. Everybody will reject it and then five years from now, Google will or Apple will announce something similar. Uh, you know, so that might happen. Yeah, I honestly all I know is they can't do it this year. It's just it's just not a good year. Maybe late 2027 they could try something. But yeah, they would have to. But that's what Duo was supposed to be, right? Duo was supposed to be sort of leaprogging the experience. Uh, and that didn't really work out.

[01:02:29]>> Uh, Intel or AMD? Intel.

[01:02:33]>> Qualcomm.

[01:02:34]>> Qualcomm. Yeah, they do need to stick with ideas for more than one generation though. But they have I would say they need to stick with ideas more than two or three generations cuz that's kind of the issue. They get to like generation two like Duo I I think if they had generation three on Duo they could have stabilized it. I don't think like sales they could have started to make inroads maybe. Um, but you know, you look at something like, as I said, the Samsung Galaxy Fold, I'd argue it took them six, but really seven generations to get to the place where people were like, "Okay, that's the device we envisioned." It's thin. It's just as thin as a normal phone. Opens up to a big 8 in display.

[01:03:31]You can barely see the crease. Battery life is good. And it has some solid shooters on the back, right? It took them seven years to get there. Um, and meanwhile, you know, I know Apple's going to come out with theirs this year and be like, "Yeah, but Apple does it in one." But Apple's building everything off of what Samsung did. How do I know this? Because Apple uses Samsung displays. So, like the their foldable Apple phone is going to have a Samsung display. Samsung's been developing that for the last seven years. Like people are like, "Oh, but the Apple one won't have a crease in it." If you were at CES, you would see Samsung showed off prototype displays that don't have the crease in it that they're going to use because that's what they invent, right?

[01:04:16]Um, so I I think they do need to stick with but so I agree with you in principle, but it's unfair to say that they need to go more than one generation because they they have on all those devices.

[01:04:36]Will the local AI LLM's getting good and cloud LLMs getting expensive be a boost to Windows? No, not yet. Maybe someday.

[01:04:46]There still needs to be this um more real world use cases of using your NPU.

[01:04:53]It's coming online. It's slow. The first thing you got to do though is like software companies aren't going to optimize software to leverage NPUs if no one has an NPU. So you then you got to release a bunch of laptops for a couple years, flood the market with NPUs until it it ratches above 10%, 20%, probably 30% and then it starts to make sense and then you can start optimizing your software because it takes time and money to do that. But then once you do that, you can start targeting those NPUs and it becomes a big deal. There's no difference in GPUs. You know, GPUs were never a thing in PCs for a long time. It was only once companies started making games that required more GPU and then someone invented that and here's a separate one you can add to your computer. Don't forget, it's a kind of a weird thing that for a lot of desktop computers like, yeah, your computer has a GPU, but you can stick a bigger one in there. So, it's like, wait, so I have two GPUs, but I can only use one. You know, it's a weird thing how that happens. Now we take it for granted, but there's a chicken egg thing going on here. So why there was no new services Snapdragon based? We answered that. They're coming there. Those were announced. They're Zach. What are you thinking? July maybe.

[01:06:08]>> July. Yes. Over the summer. July, August. Um, that's when we're expecting them.

[01:06:15]>> Misty Aerys surfaces fancy wallpapers from birds. Scenic mountain views. Now they're all Rainbow Bloom. Yeah, a change up would be nice with wallpaper.

[01:06:23]I agree.

[01:06:25]>> Would it make sense?

[01:06:26]>> Don't forget they're showcas they're showcasing Windows 11, right? So, >> would it make sense to buy a refurbished Surface product? How will the support be? Also, which model or year should it be? If you buy it from Microsoft refurbished storefront, absolutely. Uh Microsoft refurbished is very good. You get a year of warranty, I believe, and they come in essentially new retail packaging. The devices are inspected for any blemishes or or or damage and fixed.

[01:06:49]So you essentially receive a new device from the external new device. The only real difference is is that obviously the insides have probably been used and whatnot. But um yeah, I would absolutely recommend buying a set of refurbished Surface PC if you can get a good price on it because they are treated essentially as new devices by Microsoft.

[01:07:12]Will the next Surface lineup for consumers still have Surface Connect ports? Yes. What the devices that were announced this week are basically like onetoone for what the consumer's devices will be outside of the display e- privacy thing which I just don't think will be part of the consumer model because no consumer really cares about that technology. Okay.

[01:07:56]reading summary that Copilot Plus PC's MPU will benefit M365 apps in their AI features. Um, I would say probably Microsoft I imagine is going through the same thing where they're going to have to, you know, redo some of their apps and you make use of the NPU. the MPU is super powerful for this stuff. So, it should be cool to see. But you also got to be careful with AI making sure that it's actually giving solutions to for that people need, not just a feature.

[01:08:38]Yeah, these prices are just silly. The Surface 12 is 1050, no keyboard. Yep. I mean, entire PC industry is going to go through this. Everything's gone up.

[01:08:46]people. Milk has gone up, gas has gone up, steak has gone up, everything goes up. You know, we're not living in a great time if you're a consumer.

[01:09:07]We got tired of waiting for this year's Surface and bought the Asus A16 with 40 gigs 48 gigs of RAM and 1 TB disc space.

[01:09:14]Yeah, killer laptop. I'm sure you're very happy with it.

[01:09:22]All right, I think it's pretty much it.

[01:09:23]I'm going to wrap it up, Zach.

[01:09:25]>> Yeah, no worries. Thank you everybody for tuning in. We'll probably be back next week to do control discuss all the podcasts available. Um, follow us on socials. Also keep updates when we go live.