on-device ai

Microsoft has quietly shipped a targeted update to the Phi Silica on‑device language model — KB5072642, which installs Phi Silica version 1.2511.1196.0 on Intel‑powered Copilot+ systems running Windows 11 (24H2 and 25H2) — a small, incremental but important release in Microsoft's ongoing...

Microsoft has quietly pushed a targeted component update for Phi Silica — the NPU‑tuned on‑device language model that powers many Windows Copilot experiences — delivering version 1.2511.1196.0 to Qualcomm‑powered Copilot+ systems via Windows Update (KB5072641). The package is a component‑level...

Windows 11’s 25H2 update is less a flashy reboot and more a decisive turn toward intelligent computing — a carefully staged evolution that stitches generative AI, on‑device inference, stronger defaults for security, and practical usability polish into the operating system customers already know...

Windows 11’s 25H2 update is less a headline-grabbing reboot and more a deliberate refocusing of the operating system into an intelligent, continuously evolving platform—one that threads generative AI, tighter hardware requirements for advanced on‑device models, and practical reliability and...

The best Windows laptops of 2025 show how far the PC ecosystem has come: ultraportable designs with OLED screens, practical on‑device AI, and battery life that finally competes with — and in some cases beats — the MacBook class, but the experience you get still depends heavily on the exact SKU...

Microsoft’s Ignite-driven pivot to an “agentic” Windows is no marketing flash — it’s a coordinated product, platform, and research push that couples new Copilot entry points in the Taskbar with an on-device agent runtime, enterprise controls, and an open‑weight experiment called Fara‑7B that...

College life demands a laptop that’s reliable, light enough to carry between classes, and—depending on your major—powerful enough for coding, CAD, or media creation; PCMag UK’s 2025 roundup gives a clear set of context‑aware recommendations, but the real buying work comes down to matching exact...

Microsoft’s demonstration of an on‑device, agentic AI that can literally click, type and navigate your PC marks one of the clearest previews yet of what “assistant as actor” will look like on Windows — and it raises more practical and policy questions than purely technical ones. Fara‑7B, a...

PCMag UK’s 2025 roundup of the lightest laptops crystallizes a simple truth: the ultralight category is no longer a playground for compromises — it’s a battlefield of trade-offs where display quality, battery life, local AI capability, and serviceability determine which models deserve the...

Microsoft's Research team has quietly pushed a milestone in on-device AI: Fara-7B, a 7‑billion‑parameter agentic small language model (SLM) built to see webpages and operate a PC by predicting mouse and keyboard actions, and it’s now available as an open-weight research artifact for hands‑on...

The PC refresh your organisation schedules today will be remembered tomorrow not for a thinner bezel or a faster clock speed, but for whether it hardened your estate against the next generation of AI‑driven attacks and data‑loss scenarios — a security decision as consequential as an OS...

On November 20, 1985, a boxed copy of Windows 1.0 left the factory and quietly began a forty-year story that transformed personal computing from a command-line craft into an expectations-setting platform — and that same platform is now being reimagined as an AI-native workspace where silicon...

After six months living with the ThinkPad X9 15 Gen 1 Aura Edition, the clearest impression is this: Lenovo has intentionally traded heritage signifiers for a modern, thin-and-light execution that aims squarely at today’s AI-tuned, style-conscious knowledge worker — and most of the trade-offs...

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's quietly released PowerToys update for Windows 11 has turned one of the suite’s most humble utilities — the clipboard — into a showpiece for the company’s on-device AI strategy, enabling local model inference, multiple cloud-provider options, and a redesigned user experience that...

Microsoft’s PowerToys has quietly shipped one of the most consequential clipboard upgrades in years — and Apple’s Spotlight-based clipboard history in macOS Tahoe, while welcome, still falls short of the productivity and privacy controls that a native “Advanced Paste” experience could deliver...

Microsoft’s Copilot push has become a lightning rod — not because the technology is uninteresting, but because the messaging, demos and rollout cadence have repeatedly collided with an audience that’s tired of broken promises, privacy worries and an operating system that still feels unfinished...

PCMag UK’s 2025 roundup of ultraportable laptops makes one thing plain: the class has matured from “light and cheap” into a broad ecosystem of purpose-built machines that trade ounces for meaningful features — from on-device AI and OLED panels to repairable modular designs — and the choices now...

Forty years after Windows first shipped to manufacturers on November 20, 1985, Microsoft finds itself at an inflection point: a company-wide push to make Windows an “agentic OS” has reignited old frustrations about reliability, privacy and user control while promising a fundamentally different...

Microsoft’s latest push to make Windows 11 an AI-first operating system landed in plain sight this week: the platform is being reshaped to host autonomous, auditable AI agents that can run in the background, interact with apps, and act on local files — all inside a contained runtime Microsoft...