At a small event at its campus in Bryanston last week, Microsoft unpacked a weighty topic - AI in computing - and showed off its latest contributions to AI-infused PCs.

While announcing the general availability of the all-new Surface Pro and the all-new Surface Laptop, the company also delved into what AI-infused computing entails, and what it can mean.

Colin Erasmus, the Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft SA, noted that finally we are living in an era where we are moving from trying to understand computers, to having a computer that understands us.

''AI is a distinctive technology of our times. internally, it has done wonders for the way we do business. It's not that AI has taken over - you are still the pilot, for us AI is the co-pilot, walking our journey with us,'' he stressed.

The devices are part of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs portfolio, a new category of Windows PCs designed for AI.

Microsoft began by asserting that Copilot+ PCs are the ''fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built''. With new silicon capable of 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second), all–day battery life and access to the most advanced AI models, the company enthused that ''Copilot+ PCs are designed to achieve a level of performance never seen before. '

The new devices have some new tricks up their figurative sleeve, such as Cocreator, which generates and refines AI images in real time; and Live Captions, which instantly translates any live or pre-recorded video from 44 languages.

Colin Erasmus

Talia Naidoo, Surface Category Manager at Microsoft South Africa,  explained that the new Surface devices have been designed for students, professionals and enthusiasts ALIKE, looking to enhance their productivity by using the power of AI.

“Over the past year, we have seen an incredible pace of AI transformation with solutions such as Microsoft Copilot allowing us to do things that we never dreamed possible – and now, we begin a new chapter of AI innovation by introducing our first-ever Copilot+ PCs from Surface.”

The 2-in-1 Microsoft Surface Pro 11^th Edition Copilot+ PC  boasts AI-accelerated power and an (optional) OLED display in a thin and light chassis. The company noted that the device boasts the new Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors, enabling it to deliver 90% faster performance than its predecessor, the Surface Pro 9.

When docked at the office, it supports fast connectivity with Wi-Fi 7, and the ability to connect to three 4k monitors. In addition, the battery life should please travellers and road warriors, offering up to a very respectable 14 hours on a charge.

A quick little prompt and a couple of seconds and this is what Copilot had to offer on the latest Surface 2-in-1.

Similarly, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7^th Edition Copilot+ PC has also been released as a conventional notebook. Like its 2-in-1 sibling, Microsoft explained that it is intended to ''empower users to accelerate innovation, solve problems faster and drive business impact with new AI capabilities and Copilot experiences.'' It too is powered by the new Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors. 

The laptop has been completely redesigned from the ground up, now boasting a new brighter display with thin bezels, more ports, faster connectivity with Wi-Fi 7, and a very appealing battery life up to 22 hours. The laptop is available in two sizes: the 13.8-inch display in a more compact design and a 15-inch display for expanded visuals.

Where the laptop takes a different approach from other PCs it that it has a 3:2 screen ration, meaning you get a higher, rather than wider screen. This, Erasmus explained, means you have to do less scrolling to view a document. In my brief hands-on experience, I also found it is actually more comfortable to look at than a screen that favours a wider, but squatter view.

In practise, the higher display of the Surface Laptop should mean less scrolling needed when viewing documents or browsing pages.

It would not have been a Microsoft launch though, without sufficient homage being paid to security, with the company assuring that both devices have been developed to be secure by default.

“At Microsoft, we believe that the best way to secure information on a PC is to secure the whole PC itself. All Copilot+ PCs are Secured-core PCs, bringing advanced security to both commercial and consumer devices. In addition to the layers of protection in Windows 11, Secured-core PCs also provide advanced firmware safeguards and dynamic root-of-trust measurement to help protect from chip to cloud,” elaborated Naidoo.

Furthermore, a Microsoft Pluton security processor will be enabled by default on all Copilot+ PCs. Pluton is a chip-to-cloud security technology – designed by Microsoft and built by silicon partners – with Zero Trust principles at the core.

This helps protect credentials, identities, personal data and encryption keys, making them significantly harder to remove from the device, even if a user is tricked into installing malware or an attacker has physical possession of the PC. All Copilot+ PCs, including the all-new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, will ship with Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS). This provides more secure biometric sign ins and eliminates the need for a password.

The Microsoft Surface Pro 11th Edition Copilot+ PC and the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition Copilot+ PC will be available in South Africa from the 3^rd of September 2024.

Estimated retail price for the Microsoft Surface Pro 11th Edition Copilot+ PC will start from R30 000 which includes a type cover keyboard, while the estimated retail price for the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition Copilot+ PC will start from R27 000. Not at all bad, considering that a top of the range MacBook Pro will easily ask you to hand over R80 000 or more.

The new Surface devices are available from Incredible Connection, Makro, Amazon, Takealot, Evetech and Braintree.