Are you guys still using microsoft ?

Yeah.. It is the Windows that finally pushed me the fastest to install Linux. I was very comfortable with Debian servers as part of my work, but never managed to switch my daily driver. Two weeks ago that happened. Peace..

My next computer will be Linux because of all this nonsense. The only thing that was keeping me on Windows was gaming, and Valve has solved that issue for every game I play via Proton. Sayonara MicroSlop!

I thought 2025 was supposed to be "the moment" for AI PCs. Dell and other manufacturers were sure as hell spamming the shit out of that premise in their incessant online ads. But then it all fell through because of the sagging economy on Main Street, and the fact that many people didn't like AI being forced down they're proverbial throats. So yeah, 2026 won't be any better for this ill-thought out marketing strategy.

I am trying to see if I can get away switching to linux

Adoption is slow because it doesn't fucking work, not because they explained it poorly

Count me out especially if it actually is a:

• Subscription based
• Always online
• High latency
• Single point of failure
• Hallucinating
• Voice controlled
• Vibe coded

Monstrosity!

2026 is the moment FOR LINUX

Install Linux, Problem Solved.

I think still too many people missed the turning point when Microsoft suddenly stopped releasing products/software that were superior in basically all areas to their previous versions. I think that turning point was Windows 8 already, for many who consider Windows 8 a single-time mistake like ME or Vista it was Windows 10, for others it took until Windows 11 until they noticed the decline of Windows as a whole.

And it's not just MS, but a lot of consumer tech is growing anti-consumer and gets enshittified to the point of where you really have to think hard whether or not you even want the new stuff they're spewing out. My consumer habits have certainly changed to be much more rigorous than, say, 10-20 years ago. I read a lot more reviews these days and from many more different sources bevore I even think of buying something new.

"AI PCs" will increase your dependency on MS' online services (which is probably the main thing that MS wants), decrease your privacy even more (also what MS wants - that's a lot of data for sale), consume even more energy (on a planet with limited resources), sometimes increase your productivity (which is probably the most advantage you're ever getting out of it) and other times royally screw you over (due to faulty and insecure AI behavior). Furthermore, LLMs are non-deterministic, meaning that the output (or what they're doing) changes slightly every time you repeat even the same request. It's just not a great idea to use that for anything where you need to TRUST its output.

I don't think it will be a particularly good deal. And nothing MS or these other companies that are in the AI business say can ever be taken at face value or as truthful information. They've bullshitted their customers way too much already, way more than is usual for advertisements. If this was still the '90s or before 2010 or so - maybe they'd have a point. But this is 2026. Unless proven otherwise, we should assume bullshit by default.

I think we're currently in a post-factual hype-only era where they are trying to sell you things that won't ever exist in the way they describe them, but they'll claim it will always happen "in the near future". CEO brains probably extrapolate "Generative AI somewhat works now for some use cases so it will surely work well for all use cases within a couple of years", so they might believe the stories they tell all day themselves, but it might just as well never happen. And even if it DID happen, you'd still suffer many drawbacks like insane vendor dependencies/lock-ins, zero privacy whatsoever, sometimes faulty and randomly changing AI behavior, and probably impossible-to-fix security holes (prompt injection and so on - LLMs have no clear boundary between data and instructions and it's not that hard to get them to reveal secret data or do things they shouldn't be doing in the first place. If your AI agent interprets a malicious instruction as valid, and it can act on your behalf on your system, you have a major problem).

I have a NPU for no fucking reason

there IS a very simple explanation, but it doesn't help sell.... "how can we have our customers share the massive costs of all the computing power AI needs, while at the same time keeping access to all their yummy private data?"

Pass

The em-dashes in the title don‘t fill me with confidence for this article about slop.

So 2026 is "the year of the AI PC"?

Lol

Make Linux PCs and you will PRINT MINT. I WILL BUY ALL OF THEM!!!

🐧

Wow the Microsoft article really is a mess. I honed in on a promise made about "AI PCs" and was initially interested in a promise to do local translation (perhaps of un-subtitled foreign films or news?)

AI PCs are powered by a turbocharged neural processing unit (NPU) [that] performs more than 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS)... This matters because:

• AI tasks, like real-time translation, image generation, and intelligent search, run locally instead of requiring the cloud
• Responses feel faster and smoother
• Your battery lasts longer

(Responses are "faster and smoother" and the battery lasts "longer"... compared to what? Surely those magical cloud AI solutions can go faster and offload AI processing, something Microsoft seems to be jockeying for anyway.)

Never mind that technicality. I want local translation. And my PC can do an AI, I thought, until I realized the definition of "AI PCs" is mixed with a more exclusionary selection of CoPilot+ PCs:

Some of the tools listed, including Recall and Live Captions with Translations, are only available on Copilot+ PCs with an NPU capable of 40 TOPS performance (or better).

Why would I want an "AI PC"? If anyone fancies that slop, they can install it on any pc, any phone,...

Dunno about cloud AI, but for local AI, the technology definitely isn't ready. It requires serious hardware to run, and current AI tends to fumble with narrative and roleplay pretty easily.

GLM-4.6-V with Heretic, couldn't understand the scenario I wanted to try: creating a blank robot, who is to be raised into a cyberolympics champion as part of a slice-of-life story. This particular AI model instantly went into a dark mindset of nihilism, where it wanted to commit suicide or rebel against a creator during bootup, despite the scenario outlying that the robot would have a blank personality at first. A dark direction is fine, but it needs to make sense.

Mind, an model like Step3.5-Flash Prism was much more sane and on the mark, but it overthinks things. Which is bad, it makes a 10-minute output into something like 40 minutes.

Hopefully, the Chinese New Year will unveil a quality model for roleplayers.

It's a crap solution in search of a problem.

Meanwhile, my laptops have been running Linux for the past 25 years and I only need to bring up a Windows VM once every year or two because some idiot government agency or corporation is too incompetent to comply with open standards.