PC hardware has never looked better — ultra‑thin, long‑lasting laptops, NPUs baked into mainstream SoCs, and GPUs that can produce playable frame rates on reasonable power budgets — yet the software side of the PC, most prominently Windows 11, feels increasingly at odds with that hardware renaissance.
The contrast is stark: OEMs and silicon makers showcased a procession of exciting devices at CES 2026, from fold-and-roll display concepts to Copilot+ hardware tuned for on‑device AI, underscoring how far mobile and desktop hardware have come in performance-per-watt, battery life, and design. Lenovo’s booth alone illustrated the point with ambitious concepts and polished Copilot+ PCs that pair high‑brightness OLEDs, advanced audio systems, and AI power‑management features. At the same time, confidence in Windows as the tiled, trusted environment those devices should run on has frayed. Longstanding users and many power professionals report regressions, bugginess after feature drops, and growing unease over Microsoft’s push to embed AI agents — Copilot and Recall among them — across the OS. Those user sentiments and documented regressions create a mismatch: better silicon, worse perceived software experience. The tension is real and deserves parsing. Much of the debate centers on where Microsoft is placing its priorities: an agentic OS oows, or a lean, reliably deterministic desktop for users who value control and predictability.
What users should expect over the near term:
The path forward is clear if not easy: prioritize reliability, transparently protect data, and make AI features opt‑in and reversible. If Microsoft can demonstrate discipline — stability first, then intelligent automation with strong consent models — the hardware renaissance and an evolved Windows could once again feel like a coherent whole. Until then, buyers can happily benefit from the hardware advances while remaining cautious about which OS features they enable and when they migrate.
Source: Windows Central PC hardware? Never felt better. Windows? Never felt worse. What gives?
Background
The contrast is stark: OEMs and silicon makers showcased a procession of exciting devices at CES 2026, from fold-and-roll display concepts to Copilot+ hardware tuned for on‑device AI, underscoring how far mobile and desktop hardware have come in performance-per-watt, battery life, and design. Lenovo’s booth alone illustrated the point with ambitious concepts and polished Copilot+ PCs that pair high‑brightness OLEDs, advanced audio systems, and AI power‑management features. At the same time, confidence in Windows as the tiled, trusted environment those devices should run on has frayed. Longstanding users and many power professionals report regressions, bugginess after feature drops, and growing unease over Microsoft’s push to embed AI agents — Copilot and Recall among them — across the OS. Those user sentiments and documented regressions create a mismatch: better silicon, worse perceived software experience. The tension is real and deserves parsing. Much of the debate centers on where Microsoft is placing its priorities: an agentic OS oows, or a lean, reliably deterministic desktop for users who value control and predictability. Overview: Why hardware feels “golden” in 2026
More performance, less heat — and better battery life
CPU and GPU architectures have matured to the point where mainstream notebooks now deliver performance formerly only available in heavier workstations, while staying thin and cool. Arm‑based laptops powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform and Intel’s Core Ultra “Radiant” family (and their competitors) deliver substantially better efficiency and improved sustained performance thanks to advanced process nodes and NPU offload. The Snapdragon X family in particular — the X Elite and X Plus — arrived as a credible alternative for thin‑and‑light Windows laptops beginning in 2024 and 2025, bringing robust NPU/TOPs capability that supports local AI workloads without immediately burning a user’s battery.OLED panels, refined industrial design, and a focus on acoustic engineering
Panel quality and chassis materials have stepped up. Vendors now routinely ship OLED OLEDs with high peak brightness, wide color gamut and excellent local dimming performance in consumer laptops, while novel materials and thin‑machining let OEMs produce lighter laptops with better thermals. Lenovo’s 2026 Yoga ecosystem — including the Yoga Pro 27UD‑10 monitor and Aura‑editions of their laptops — showcased how premium displays and integrated audio systems are being prioritized for creators and prosumers.Value in the channel — discounts are making premium features accessible
The product mix is also shifting. Strong 2025 shipment volumes led large vendors to move inventory aggressively into early‑2026 sales, creating bargain windows for high‑value hardware. The ASUS Zenbook A14, a 2025 standout, surfaced in major holiday and winter sales at prices that suddenly made an OLED, long‑battery laptop with a Snapdragon X‑class SoC accessible near the $600–$800 bracket — a sign that the hardware curve is not limited to flagship pricing tiers.Market scale: shipments underline the momentum
Industry trackers measured meaningful growth in 2025, reinforcing the notion that this is not a boutique renaissance. Vendors shipped more units than in prior years, and Lenovo led the market with shipments around 70–71 million units for 2025 — a volume that supports widespread component investment, economies of scale for features, and richer OEM engineering. Those figures are consistent across multiple analysts’ reports.Why Windows can feel worse even when hardware is better
a has ballooned
Windows 11’s design over the last several releases has incorporated more resident services, cloud hooks, telemetry, built‑in agents and background synchronization by default. Every additional background tracer — whether for search, indexing, Copilot integration, OneDrive sync, or telemetry — increases the OS’ baseline activity and interacts with a bewildering range of third‑party drivers and utilities. That can translate into micro‑latencies (delays measured in milliseconds) that are highly perceptible for routine interactions like opening File Explorer, invoking context menus, switching windows, or restoring from sleep. Multiple community reporings documented these exact symptoms following recent feature drops.2) Faster release cadence + incomplete platform coverage
Microsoft’s shift toward a faster cadence — monthly cumulative updates plus semi‑annual or more frequent feature pushes — means more changes reach end users sooner. That agility benefits feature delivery but reduces the time for corner‑case testing across thousands of OEM firmware and driver permutations. The 24H2 cycle and subsequent updates illustrated this trade‑off: several compatibility holds and targeted hotfixes were required to mitigate gaming regressions, anti‑cheat conflicts, and driver‑related freezes. The result: perception of instability even as some under‑the‑hood improvements roll out.3) Hardware baseline and migration friction
Setting a higher baseline for security and AI capabilities — TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, and relatively modern CPUs — helped Microsoft enable features like on‑device NPUs and stronger attestation. But the policy excluded older but still serviceable machines, creating a migration pressure that collided with user reluctance. Windows 10’s end of support on October 14, 2025, forced choices: upgrade hardware, pay for temporary Extended Security Updates (ESU), or remain vulnerable. That policy move increased churn, frustration, and the visibility of any Windows 11 regressions during migration windows.4) AI-first design decisions have usability and security costs
Microsoft’s Copilot and Copilot+ efforts, combined with features like Recall — which indexes local screenshots and activity for later search — attempted to deliver a new productivity model (an “agentic” OS that can act on behalf of users). The promise is compelling: faster search, natural‑language tasking, and contextual automation. However, those features introduce additional code paths, data collection questions, and a larger attack surface. Early iterations of Recall encountered valid criticism: unencrypted snapshot databases, opt‑o risk that sensitive content might be indexed. Microsoft revised Recall to require Windows Hello authentication and encrypted storage after researchers flagged problems, but the initial missteps created a trust deficit that lingers.5) Perception and confirmation bias amplify pain
When routine tasks feel inconsistent — a context menu that lags, a folder that takes a second to render thumbnails — those experiences are memorable and get shared widely. Social amplification and the natural human bias toward negative events create a feedback loop: a few visible regressions persuade many users that the OS is less reliable overall, even in the presence of many constructive changes. That dynamic has shaped the conversation around Windows in 2025–2026.The “agentic OS” pivot: what Microsoft said, what it means, and why users reacted
What Microsoft communicated
Windows leadership signaled that the company envisions Windows evolving into an “agentic operating system” — an OS where AI agents can autonomously perform multi‑step tasks, orchestrate across apps, and proactively aid users. Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows, discussed embedding agents and an Agent Workspace designed to isolate agent actions from the main session for auditability and security. Public statements and internal reorganizations underscored a strategic reorientation of engineering teams toward this vision.Why some users pushed back
Power users, developers, and privacy advocates reacted to the language and early previews with skepticism. The reasons break down into a few categories:- Trust and consent: Users worry about agents accessing documents, screenshots, and application contexts without clear, granular consent models. The early Recall rollout, initially perceived as opt‑out and under‑protected, crystallized those fears.
- Reliability over novelty: Many critics argued that Microsoft should prioritize baseline stability, driver compatibility, and consistent UI behavior before layering autonomous agents on top of the experience. The combination of regressions after feature drops and agentic rhetoric felt like a mismatch of priorities.
- Developer and power‑user friction: Some developers and sysadmins viewed agentic automation as a potential tool that would abstract control away from users, complicating debugging, scripting, and repeatability in enterprise workflows. Microsoft’s assurances that they “care deeply about developers” did little to immediately allay fears.
Is agentic computing inherently bad?
Not necessarily. Agentic capabilities — when built with clear opt‑in controls, auditable logs, strict sandboxing, and transparent data handling — can deliver meaningful productivity gains for certain classes of users: creators, knowledge workers, and those who benefit from automation. The problem is execution and timing: shipping ambitious AI features before the underlying trust, security and performance baseline is rock solid invites backlash and erodes goodwill.The security and privacy calculations: Recall, Copilot, and the data trade-offs
Microsoft’s Copilot and Recall experiments highlight the core trade: convenience vs. risk. Recall’s core idea — making previously viewed content instantly searchable — is powerful for productivity but extraordinarily sensitive by design. Independent researchers and security outlets flagged that initial Recall design choices left unencrypted snapshot databases accessible on disk and that default enablement could lead to unexpected indexing of private content. Microsoft responded with technical mitigations and an opt‑in posture, but the episode underscores the broader point: AI features that ingest or persist user data must be designed with robust adversary models and clear controls from day one. Enterprise admins and security teams will want to know, concretely:- Can Recall be fully disabled and uninstalled? (Early reporting suggested limitations.
- Is the snapshot database encrypted and guarded against local escalation? Microsoft moved to strong authentication gating (Windows Hello) and per‑file encryption as part of its rework, but the episode remains an instructive case study.
Where Microsoft could course‑correct — practical steps that would rebuild confidence
1) Emphasize reliability and measurable UX baselines
Ship fewer disruptive features at once; prioritize regression testing across widely deployed drivers and OEM stacks; and publish measurable UX baselines that show improvements (for example, File Explorer cold‑start latency metrics across a standard set of devices). Users want tangible evidence that basic interactions are improving, not just more AI features.2) Make AI features plainly opt‑in and always reversible
Agentic features should default to off. When Opt‑in is necessary for discoverability, the onboarding UX should explain what is collected, how it is stored, and how to remove or export data. In practice:- Default off for features that index local content.
- One‑click, complete uninstallability for any AI component.
- Strong cryptographic protections and per‑use authentication for any stored content.
Those are non‑negotiables for trust.
3) Provide a clear, well‑documented “AI manifest” for apps and agents
A manifest that an app must provide — describing what contexts an agent will access, whether uploads occur, retention policies, and telemetry — would let users make informed decisions and help auditors evaluate risk.4) Restore and preserve power‑user controls
Bring back easy, discoverable toggles for core system behaviors: update scheduling, taskbar and Start customizations, and clear Group Policy knobs for AI features. Power users and admins should feel respected, not sidelined, by major UX pivots.Hardware optimism: why buyers should still be excited
Despite software turbulence, there are many reasons to be bullish about the hardware platform:- Value convergence: Premium features — OLED displays, multi‑mic arrays, and lightweight magnesium/aluminum builds — are increasingly available at prices previously reserved for higher tiers. Deals on models like the Zenbook A14 show that robust, long‑battery devices can be affordable during channel promotions.
- Local AI is becoming feasible: NPUs in mainstream SoCs (Snapdragon X family, Intel’s NPUs, AMD’s XDNA, etc. let vendors offload inference from the cloud. That reduces latency, cost, and some privacy risks when implemented correctly.
- GPU and rendering advances: NVIDIA and others are accelerating d neural rendering. The GeForce RTX 50 series (Blackwell) and the RTX 5090 naming indicate how GPU vendors are prioritizing AI‑assisted graphics, which benefits both creatives and gamers.
A sober verdict: hardware and software are out of sync — for now
The industry is in a period of rapid transition: hardware has improved dramatically in efficiency, durability, and cost; software, particularly OS platforms, is racing to integrate AI in ways that are not yet fully understood or universally welcomed. Microsoft’s “agentic OS” thesis is ambitious and could be transformative if executed with humility and rigorous engineering discipline. But current execution has produced missteps — premature defaults, privacy gaffes, and regressions that undercut the OS’ promise.What users should expect over the near term:
- Expect continued hardware innovation and attractive deals tied to inventory flows and strong 2025 shipments; market leaders like Lenovo shipped roughly 70–71 million units in 2025, which sustains investment in fresh designs.
- Expect Microsoft to double down on AI integration, but also expect a protracted period of feature revision and community pushback; the company has already adjusted Recall and publicly responded to developer and power‑user concerns.
- Expect third‑party responses: tools that strip or disable AI features are already circulating, and sysadmins will continue to build guardrails and policies to quarantine features deemed risky in enterprise settings.
Practical guidance for readers today
- If you’re buying a laptop for hardware value: prioritize displays, battery life, and thermal design. Many 2025 models are now discounted; the ASUS Zenbook A14 is an example of an OLED, thin, long‑battery device appearing at aggressive price points in early‑2026 sales.
- If you’re a power user who relies on stability and control: delay moving to bleeding‑edge feature channels; prefer Pro/Enterprise SKUs where Group Policy and update deferral give you more choices; track Microsoft’s official advisories before enabling agentic features.
- If you manage enterprise fleets: treat any feature that indexes or persists user content as a security risk until it has been fully audited and configurable via policy; test vendor ESU or migration strategies now if you still operate Windows 10 devices because support ended on October 14, 2025.
Conclusion
We are genuinely in a golden age of PC hardware: thinner, lighter, brighter, and smarter silicon is available at price points and power envelopes that would have seemed unlikely a few years ago. That progress, however, is being tested by an OS maker that has chosen an aggressive AI‑first path. Microsoft’s ambitions to make Windows an “agentic” platform could unlock new productivity paradigms, but the current mix of rollout speed, opaque defaults, and security stumbles has damaged user trust.The path forward is clear if not easy: prioritize reliability, transparently protect data, and make AI features opt‑in and reversible. If Microsoft can demonstrate discipline — stability first, then intelligent automation with strong consent models — the hardware renaissance and an evolved Windows could once again feel like a coherent whole. Until then, buyers can happily benefit from the hardware advances while remaining cautious about which OS features they enable and when they migrate.
Source: Windows Central PC hardware? Never felt better. Windows? Never felt worse. What gives?
