By Richard Speed – The Register
Microsoft is experimenting with having Copilot open automatically upon Windows startup.
Described as a “Change and Improvement” for users who have a minimum screen width of 27 inches, Microsoft’s latest attempt to cram the AI assistant into every bit of the OS turned up in the Windows Insider Dev Channel a few days ago.
The change is still rolling out and might never move beyond the Dev Channel, although considering Microsoft’s evangelism for all things AI, it seems likely that it or something similar will arrive in release guise before long.
Opening Copilot automatically can be toggled via a Personalization option, and the automatic startup will only show up in regions where the assistant is supported. These include North America, the UK, and South America. Microsoft has indicated that it intends to add additional markets over time.
As well as the Copilot experiment, Microsoft has added support for the latest iteration of USB4, which ups the speed from 40 Gbps to 80 Gbps, assuming one has the appropriate hardware to hand. As far as Microsoft is concerned, this means select devices based on the Intel Core 14th Gen HX-series mobile processors. The company cited the Razer Blade 18, shown off at CES 2024, as an example.
According to Microsoft: “It is fully backwards compatible with peripherals built for older generations of USB and Thunderbolt and works alongside all other USB Type-C features.”
The latest version of USB4 can hit 120 Gbps. In its announcement for the Blade 18, Razer noted the implementation of “Bandwidth Boost” to hit a speed three times the previous iteration of USB4. Razer did not reveal the launch date of the Blade 18, which will presumably work best once Microsoft has moved its support to the release branch of Windows.
Additionally, Microsoft has updated the Windows share window to share URLs directly to WhatsApp, Gmail, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and dealt with an issue “which was impacting Windows share window reliability for some Insiders.” It has dealt with a similar problem in Task Manager too.
The company noted: “Some fixes noted here in Insider Preview builds from the Dev Channel may make their way into the servicing updates for the released version of Windows 11.” ®