Here are some helpful hand and wrist exercizes to ease the 17 light year distance brought to you by our friendly ET-PT:

True, copilot is the best incarnation of clippy yet. The AI aspect does have uses for sure and I do like its current placement on Windows 11. I think most people will have some fun with it. However, I am not sure I am blown away with the idea of a copilot keyboard button... Too soon imo.

What do you think of spending $20 a month for the "pro", and how long do you think the "free" will remain free? But...but...the OS is "free". Lol.

"There is nothing more expensive than something that is free." - Japanese proverb

There already is a copilot key anyway Win+C. I use it all the time since I can't stand having a ton of pins on my taskbar. I do not need a key with a picture on it. Besides I love me K70 with the cherry speeds.

There is a lot at play with AI right now. I believe the market still has a lot of shape to take in several area's. One of these area's where things will change is actual hardware changes. The cpu and gpu have certain functions already and in order for AI to work at its peak performance changes need to be made in the traditional manner with how chips function. This is a big reason why we had companies like intel leak Windows refresh in 2024, they are actually in the process of making true AI chips. This means if AI really does  take off you may also want to upgrade hardware at some point. To answer your question, I do believe there will be a "free" co pilot version for a good while strictly because of the amount of change that AI is about to bring will take time. New things need good adoption rates, so when most the world adopts to the changes then we may see changes in what we "pay" for copilot. Of course that is not to say a "price" for telemetry data collecting wont be under way.

Is a pro version worth 20 dollars a month? Obviously not for the average joe with light AI interest / curiosity. But, for people that use copilot for the work or their passion (i.e. AI art) there certainly are benefits. Microsoft is going to spend an awful lot of resources on AI now so I wouldn't call the 20 a month a rip off compared to their contribution.

As to the HW issue I really would be out of touch. I'm running 128GB and soon to be 256GB. I can't even remember when I last had 64GB. However price wise is where they get me. If it's forced on you (and it will be) then it should be free. I dont care how many billions MSFT spends on it. It can be a useful tool and maybe an unlimited version for a fee idk might be ok. Don't forget however they force you into an MSA which is how they really make their money off you

It can't be as you have to invest in the machine to handle it...and there will be an MSA. Count on it along with the OSaaS.

I mean idk my machine handles it now. I'm pretty sure W12 is going to be all abought copilot. Only way not to have it will be to stay on 11 or move to some other OS. 

Everyone has said Windows will go to pay to play since Windows 8 yet I have no fee so far. Maybe they will change it in 12 but I won't pay for it I promise you that

You're fine from the RAM pov, but your chip will require change...to Meteor Lake or something with its capabilities.

Until the next OS which'll need a Millenium Falcon that can "do the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs...less if you round down."

Well I'll never go with intel but what will change? My cpu works fine now. Unless we're talking about different things. I'm only referring to copilot. Unless it's an artificial hurdle to be added. All in all I doubt I'll use 12 anyway. My days of jumping on to the "next great thing" are pretty much over. Also as a 30+ year veteran developer I am very unhappy with how software has been going for the last 10 ish years. Meh we will see

Intel is not the only chip maker that can develop ai chips. I am pretty sure most chip makers such as AMD can as well. Of course NVidia already has been making use of AI for a couple years now with their GPU's, I believe their high end AI GPU's are what is currently powering Microsofts copiliot to begin with.

Basically AI chips can be thought of in the same a way that GPU can. A CPU's function just doesn't allow graphic to thrive in the same way a GPU can, but if you are not in need for a graphics boost because it is not what you use a PC for then there is no need for you to have a separate GPU. Same concept with an AI chip, technically you can use graphics components on a CPU or GPU but an AI chip will allow the AI to go at a much higher speed. So for casual AI users I do not think it would be a requirement to have an AI chip, I for sure am not looking to buy one right now.

Most these upcoming mainstream AI chips are coming out this year. I do not think Microsoft is in any position to actually require people to get them for Windows 12. It can be argued that Windows 11 already failed a bit by requiring TPM 2.0 because Windows 11 adoption rate has been low. If Microsoft were to require AI chips for Windows 12 I would expect a really low adoption rate which would probably result in Satya Nadella being shown the door. I truly believe AI chips are only going to be a recommendation not a requirement.

For sure I am not hardcore going into AI right now. Microsoft still has a lot of work to do to sell it to me. Right now it is very much in a place that I can live without it.

I understand the concept behind it. My take away from the convo was, due to new AI inclusion, Users will be "Required" to get a new CPU for Windows 12. However I don't think that is correct. While it may make it faster (the same way a 4090 GPU would be faster than an iGPU) it wouldn't be "required" In other words W12 would be no different in "My" use case. However it is entirely possible I misread the flow of the convo. 

As for W11 I wasn't really bothered by the new requirements. Not only are they defeatable but most of it made sense to me. "Perhaps" they could have went a bit further back for CPU support but for me I'm never more than a single generation back. I Might skip one gen but then upgrade to the next. I saw a lot of people complaining that their 12 year old CPU wasn't supported. Such is the nature of the relationship between HW and SW. In order for SW to progress it often times relies on the HW to support it. Imagine ray tracing on an 8th gen intel cpu with a 980 GPU on Windows 7. At some point someone has to pull the trigger. It's a song and dance as old as anything.

If Microsoft is already scraping the previous Windows 12 UI changes. Then all we are really left talking about is updating copilot along with making a few UI changes and keyboard changes to make copilot pop out more often. It all makes for a pretty boring new version of Windows. I honestly think Windows 12 will end up being scrapped all together in favor of Windows 11 24h2 in its place. Otherwise I could see myself skipping an OS that is pretty much just touting AI rather then UI as well.

The way I understood the original article (not that I'm a computer engineer), was rather the current generation of chips were inadequate to do AI.

That would require either new chips, ie new hw, or as Adobe currently does it: In the cloud with selling AI computer time to the users in the form of "plans" or "credits" granted per Creative Cloud plan on a monthly basis.

I read a pretty lengthy article on it as well. The modern GPU does AI tasks better then a cpu does because of its way it retrieves data. However, the GPU is tradtionally tasked with retrieving large amounts of data and this is bad for AI because AI needs to retrieve a whole lot of smaller data all at once. Basically AI data retrieving does not work in a manner of the traditional CPU or GPU. The solution is an AI GPU with specific cores that allow for smaller data tranfer or a CPU with a specific chip. I didn't get into a lot of specifics on the new CPU's but it would seem they are a whole lot cheaper then the GPU's that NVidia is producing for Microsoft and Amazon. Meaning the new CPU's may be the first viable option for home users.

Cheaper would be welcome for sure, but from what I've seen the opposite usually happens.