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Microsoft's new era of AI PCs will need a Copilot key, says Intel

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Re: Microsoft's new era of AI PCs will need a Copilot key, says Intel

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Copilot key is essentially a rebranding and takeover of the context menu key. Besides a new label for the keycap and maybe a different key mapping it won't effect much. It'll probably have a bigger impact on ThinkPads that will have to move Print Screen again.

> The Copilot key is essentially a rebranding and takeover of the context menu key. The...what? I mean, I know what it is, but I haven't seen a keyboard with one in a while; my Microsoft ergonomic wireless keyboard has the Fn key where it would normally be, and my Alienware laptop has a windows-key-disabling-lock-key there, and my Dell Vostro sacrifices the space to make room for having both arrow keys and a numeric…

> I mean, I know what it is, but I haven't seen a keyboard with one in a while

Logitech keyboards have them.

Re: Microsoft's new era of AI PCs will need a Copilot key, says Intel

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Copilot key is essentially a rebranding and takeover of the context menu key. Besides a new label for the keycap and maybe a different key mapping it won't effect much. It'll probably have a bigger impact on ThinkPads that will have to move Print Screen again.

> The Copilot key is essentially a rebranding and takeover of the context menu key. The...what? I mean, I know what it is, but I haven't seen a keyboard with one in a while; my Microsoft ergonomic wireless keyboard has the Fn key where it would normally be, and my Alienware laptop has a windows-key-disabling-lock-key there, and my Dell Vostro sacrifices the space to make room for having both arrow keys and a numeric…

It's the context menu key spot. It's often co-opted these days (especially on laptops) but if you look at the new Surface Laptop 6 or Surface Pro 10 keyboard the context menu key of the Surface Laptop 5 or prior SP Type Covers has been replaced by the copilot key. It even looks like the context menu key now on the Fn layer. I wouldn't be surprised if MS says to partners it HAS to be there next to alt.

You can clearly see it's position completely replacing the old context menu key in the image of the new boldset SP type cover in this recent blogpost: https://blogs.windows.com/devices/2024/03/21/introducing-sur...

Re: Microsoft's new era of AI PCs will need a Copilot key, says Intel

#53

I honestly pray for the day PC gaming works 99% on Linux. I hate Windows 11, it prompts me every 3 days to setup my Microsoft account and then every update it reinstalls OneDrive and the list of bull shit it included by default is over 300 items long. Thankfully the Steam deck seems to have accelerated progress in this regard, but its still a long way to go, specifically multiplayer shooters.

I mean, other than very old games (try running Sid Meier's Pirates under proton! it's barely playable) and user-hostile games (if the developers use anticheats which block Linux on purpose, that's not really Linux's fault) we are at least 95% of the way there. Sure, there will always be someone who will complain that "Valorant doesn't run on Linux" but the overwhelming majority of games do.

The plans of the Riot Games are not promising. Their new anti-cheat engine is going to run on Kernel level and log everything from the computer, and uploads this information who knows where.

Re: Microsoft's new era of AI PCs will need a Copilot key, says Intel

#54
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we’re at 90% right now. I’ve been gaming on Linux (both retro and new games) for the past 3 or 4 years and the vast majority run with either no or minimal, identical config.

Do they perform the same as they would on Windows though? No FPS loss for example?

I’ve not noticed a difference.

I did gpu pass through to a windows vm to test a while ago and didn’t get any major difference in fps.

Re: Microsoft's new era of AI PCs will need a Copilot key, says Intel

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Copilot key is essentially a rebranding and takeover of the context menu key. The...what? I mean, I know what it is, but I haven't seen a keyboard with one in a while; my Microsoft ergonomic wireless keyboard has the Fn key where it would normally be, and my Alienware laptop has a windows-key-disabling-lock-key there, and my Dell Vostro sacrifices the space to make room for having both arrow keys and a numeric…

It's the context menu key spot. It's often co-opted these days (especially on laptops) but if you look at the new Surface Laptop 6 or Surface Pro 10 keyboard the context menu key of the Surface Laptop 5 or prior SP Type Covers has been replaced by the copilot key. It even looks like the context menu key now on the Fn layer. I wouldn't be surprised if MS says to partners it HAS to be there next to alt. You can clearly…

> It’s the context menu key spot.

I’m not denying its a spot that exists; I’m saying lots of existing keyboards already replace the context menu key with something else viewed as more important, so that, whatever the preferred spot was previously called, what the actual tradeoff for the the AI certification is often won’t be the context menu key.

Re: Microsoft's new era of AI PCs will need a Copilot key, says Intel

#56

I honestly pray for the day PC gaming works 99% on Linux. I hate Windows 11, it prompts me every 3 days to setup my Microsoft account and then every update it reinstalls OneDrive and the list of bull shit it included by default is over 300 items long. Thankfully the Steam deck seems to have accelerated progress in this regard, but its still a long way to go, specifically multiplayer shooters.

It's getting dramatically better partially due to the steamdeck since it runs Linux. Some games might not still work in the future though due to kernel level anticheats mostly only supporting windows.

Maybe they will add Linux support in the future (for better or worse)

Re: Microsoft's new era of AI PCs will need a Copilot key, says Intel

#57
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell from the current preview releases, the Copilot stuff still runs in the cloud, and it would be infeasible to run a general GPT-like chatbot on consumer PC hardware for a good while. I imagine the NPU stuff is for assist with misc local AI/ML tasks, like photo editing and typing auto-correct ala what Apple's doing with their OSes.

> it would be infeasible to run a general GPT-like chatbot on consumer PC hardware for a good while. It's lower quality and slower than cloud, but I can run ollama on my aging laptops today ; I wouldn't be surprised if the addition of hardware acceleration allowed new PCs to run a chatbot locally.

You can run Ollama on your aging laptop today, but at how many tokens per second and at how many parameters? Most consumer PC hardware isn't going to have a very capable GPU. But, I certainly anticipate "AI accelerators" in consumer PCs, in the short term, ala AI PC NPUs.

FWIW, I basically leave Ollama running on my M3 Max and 24/7 and use it regularly, and it's ridiculously fast, but: M3 Max with lots of RAM and a crazy memory busy.

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