local ai

Microsoft announced the Surface Laptop Ultra at Computex 2026 in Taipei, a 15-inch professional Windows laptop built with Nvidia’s new RTX Spark superchip and scheduled to arrive this fall from Microsoft Surface and other PC makers. The machine is being pitched less as another premium notebook...

Nvidia and Microsoft unveiled RTX Spark at Computex 2026 in Taipei as a Windows on Arm platform built around Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU technology, a 20-core Arm CPU, up to 128GB of unified memory, and a claimed 1 petaflop of local AI compute. The announcement matters because Windows on Arm has...

NVIDIA and Microsoft announced RTX Spark on May 31, 2026, at GTC Taipei, pitching a new class of Windows laptops and compact desktops built around a 1-petaflop NVIDIA superchip, up to 128GB of unified memory, and local AI agents arriving from major PC makers this fall. The headline sounds like...

Microsoft and Nvidia are expected to unveil the first Windows PCs powered by Nvidia-designed Arm chips during Computex in Taipei and Microsoft Build in San Francisco in early June 2026, marking Nvidia’s most direct attempt yet to enter the Windows client processor market. The move is not just...

Microsoft has released KB5096566, a May 2026 Windows AI component update that installs Phi Silica version 1.2605.856.0 automatically through Windows Update on AMD-powered Copilot+ PCs running Windows 11 version 24H2 or 25H2 with the latest cumulative update already installed. The update is...

Microsoft has published KB5096137, an automatic Windows Update package that updates the Qualcomm QNN Execution Provider to version 2.2605.2.0 for Windows 11, version 26H1 devices with the latest cumulative update installed. It is a small-sounding component refresh with an outsized strategic...

Microsoft has published KB5096570, a May 2026 Phi Silica AI component update that installs version 1.2604.515.0 on AMD-powered Copilot+ PCs running Windows 11 version 26H1, provided the device already has the latest cumulative update installed. The update is small in presentation but large in...

The local AI coding assistant stack is having a moment, and for good reason: it solves two problems developers have been complaining about for years. It cuts recurring subscription costs, and it keeps source code on your own machine instead of shipping it to a remote service. The combination of...

Running AI locally on Windows 11 is no longer just a hobbyist stunt, and Tom Fenton’s latest Virtualization Review test makes that point in unusually practical terms. In his setup, an older NVIDIA Quadro P2200 in a Razer Core X eGPU enclosure turned a Windows laptop into a much more capable...

Microsoft’s Windows AI APIs are starting to change the way developers think about on-device intelligence, and Lance McCarthy’s experience shows just how low the barrier can be. What sounds like a big platform shift turns out, in practice, to be a small and highly practical workflow change: use...

Microsoft’s NPU story has quietly moved from keynote gloss to everyday utility. What started as a Copilot+ PC headline in 2024 is now showing up in accessibility tools, creative apps, security software, and even workplace assistants that can run meaningful AI tasks locally on Windows hardware...

A glossy, nostalgia‑steeped concept video has reimagined Windows 7 as if Microsoft had continued developing the platform into 2026 — preserving the operating system’s familiar look while grafting on modern features such as a refreshed File Explorer, smarter search, customizable desktop widgets...

If you want powerful AI without paying recurring subscription fees, you no longer need to rely solely on cloud services — your existing PC can do a surprising amount of heavy lifting, and four free tools make that practical, fast, and privacy-friendly: Ollama, LM Studio, GPT4All, and Jan. These...

Microsoft has quietly released KB5079266, an incremental Phi Silica AI component update that installs Phi Silica version 1.2601.1273.0 on Intel‑powered Copilot+ PCs running Windows 11, version 26H1, and the package is delivered automatically through Windows Update to qualifying devices...

Microsoft’s latest push to bring the cloud inside the walls of the datacenter is no longer a preview exercise: Azure Local, Microsoft 365 Local (including a Disconnected mode), and Foundry Local are now being offered as production-ready options that let organizations run cloud-native services —...

CES 2026 made one thing unmistakably clear: AI stopped being an optional spec line and became the operating layer across PCs, displays, and peripherals — and the devices that impressed most were the ones that treated on‑device intelligence as a first‑class design constraint rather than a sticker...

Local AI browsers now let your phone run a full assistant without sending private queries to cloud servers — but setting one up takes planning, correct hardware, and an understanding of trade‑offs between privacy, performance, and convenience. In this piece we walk through the realistic options...

Microsoft has quietly turned one of PowerToys’ smallest utilities — Advanced Paste — into a proving ground for on‑device AI, adding multi‑provider support and explicit local model paths so clipboard transforms can run on your PC (even on an NPU) instead of always phoning home. Background...

Microsoft’s PowerToys Advanced Paste has taken a decisive step toward local-first AI by adding on-device model support and multi-provider flexibility in the 0.96 update, turning a once-simple clipboard helper into a hybrid AI gateway that gives users faster transforms, reduced cloud costs, and...

Microsoft PowerToys 0.96.0 pushes Advanced Paste from a niche convenience feature into a configurable hybrid AI gateway—adding support for multiple cloud providers and local model hosts—while polishing the Command Palette, extending PowerRename with photo metadata tokens, and addressing a long...