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Microsoft's Copilot AI service is set to run locally on PCs, Intel told Tom's Hardware. The company also said that next-gen AI PCs would require built-in neural processing units (NPUs) with over 40 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of power — beyond the capabilities of any consumer processor on the market.
Intel said that the AI PCs would be able to run "more elements of Copilot" locally. Currently, Copilot runs nearly everything in the cloud, even small requests. That creates a fair amount of lag that's fine for larger jobs, but not ideal for smaller jobs. Adding local compute capability would decrease that lag, while potentially improving performance and privacy as well.
Microsoft was previously rumored to require 40 TOPS on next-gen AI PCs (along with a modest 16GB of RAM). Right now, Windows doesn't make much use of NPUs, apart from running video effects like background blurring for Surface Studio webcams. ChromeOS and macOS both use NPU power for more video and audio processing features, though, along with OCR, translation, live transcription and more, Ars Technica noted.
So far, the processor with the fastest NPU speed is Apple M3, which offers 18 TOPS across the lineup (M3, M3 Pro and M3 Ultra). AMD's Ryzen 8040 and 7040 laptop
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Memory (or RAM) is the perfect example of this. Your PC uses RAM to hold data temporarily: When you're opening applications, working on large files in Photoshop, or even juggling dozens and dozens of browser tabs, that data is being stored in the system memory, not on your SSD or HDD. The more memory-intensive tasks you do, the more RAM you should have. It'll keep your computer feeling fast and responsive.
Many laptop shoppers know this, but not exactly how much to get. So we've broken down what to expect from common RAM configurations, plus some tips at the end for purchase strategies.
Is 2GB of RAM good for a laptop?
For modern Windows computers, 2GB of RAM will feel slow. You won't be able to run many programs simultaneously, much less have more than a few browser tabs open at one time. These days, most Windows laptops come with 4GB as the baseline configuration, and for good reason.
(As for Apple laptops, they've long left even 4GB RAM behind as a baseline.)
If for some reason you encounter a laptop with only 2GB RAM—perhaps an older budget model being sold secondhand—it's only worthwhile if you can immediately upgrade it to 4GB RAM or more. That means the laptop should have user-accessibl
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Apple's AirTag 4-Pack has dropped to $74.99 today on Amazon, down from $99.00. This deal brings the AirTag 4-Pack back down to its all-time low price, which is a price that we haven't tracked since the holiday season.
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