Surface Laptop Studio 2: Status, Upgrades, and Hands-on Experience with High-end Hardware and AI Upgrades Towards Windows 11

The base Surface Laptop Studio 2 will be available for $1,999 when you pre-order it at the Microsoft Store. As is expected, the higher-end models will cost you north of $3,000 and include as much as 2 terabytes of storage, 64 gig of ram, and an Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics card. There will be a laptop available in October.

The upgrades largely match WinFuture’s leaks from last week, which included photos showing the new microSD card slot and some new ports on the left side of the device.

The media event was held in New York City. The company used the occasion to show off two new laptops from its house-made Surface line as well as a slew of AI-powered enhancements coming to Windows 11 later this month. We were there to hear the announcements and watch the demos, as well as to have a hands-on experience with the new devices. There are some highlights here.

The additional sustainability is a nice touch — especially as these devices are marketed to businesses that will need to keep them running for a few years. But the overall design being near-identical to its predecessor doesn’t particularly bode well for the Surface Go 4. In our review of the Surface Go 3, The Verge lambasted the convertible device for its flimsy build quality, poor battery life, and being too expensive for what you’re actually getting.

Microsoft’s next big update: Copilot, DALL-E 3 and Personalized Answers on Bing Chat, and Shopping at Bing

Windows 11 is getting its next big update on September 26th. The update will be jam-packed with new features, including the new AI-powered Windows Copilot that Microsoft’s been testing, along with a redesigned File explorer, and native support for RAR and 7-zip.

The new Windows volume mixer will allow you to control app volumes individually. There’s also a Dynamic Lighting setting that you can use to adjust the lighting on your PC’s components.

You can use Copilot to find flight information on your phone for an upcoming trip, compose texts based on context, and many other search- and productivity-related tasks. It will be accessible through the Windows desktop as a stand-alone app but also within Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Edge. The new feature will be part of the next Windows 11 update, which will be released on September 26.

Bing Chat, Microsoft’s AI chatbot, is getting a big update. Microsoft announced that it’s adding DALL-E 3, the latest version of OpenAI’s text-to-image generator, to Bing Chat for free. The Personalized Answers feature, which will use your chatting history to inform Bing’s responses, is also being provided by the Artificial Intelligence chatbot.

Want to use Bing to shop for stuff? Microsoft says the Shopping tab will also get the Copilot treatment, and you can talk to the assistant to get help finding what you want to buy. Copilot will guide you through a series of questions so it can better understand what you are looking for and show relevant shopping recommendations, including reviews on products and pros and cons. It will be available this fall.