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Microsoft had one nightmare series last week. This week, the tech giant took a break, as much of the news surrounding Microsoft was positive. Reports of two new Surface devices plus the introduction of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 give enthusiasts, gamers, and those who need productivity hardware details to grab onto. Add in a mysterious list of Xbox controllers and OpenAI that supposedly has access to benchmark data to make its AI models tick, and you’ve got yourself a busy week in the tech world.
The new Surface device
A new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro are on the way. That’s the word from our senior editor Zac Bowden, who reported on the next wave of Surface hardware recently. According to Bowden’s sources, both new pieces of Surface hardware will be premium devices.
The new Surface products are expected to have premium models similar to their bigger siblings, which would contrast with the Surface Laptop Go which was more of a budget device. The new Surface Pro will be a direct competitor to the 11-inch iPad Pro, according to Bowden’s report.
Qualcomm Snapdragon X/Plus it is said to power the rumored devices. These internals will allow the new hardware to drop between $800 and $900.
Bowden also discussed the planned launch of Intel’s Lunar Lake variants of the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 and the development of the Surface Pro 12 and Surface Laptop 8 this week.
Windows 10 delivery
Windows 10 will reach the end of support in October of this year, but Microsoft has plans for the operating system before the cutoff date. Unfortunately, the plans involve making Windows 10 worse, or at least making the email experience worse for the built-in email client on Windows 10 PCs. Next month, Microsoft will release an “update” that will replace Mail & Calendar with the new Outlook.
👉 Read more: Microsoft is wrong: The new Outlook for Windows isn’t ready for prime time
Mail & Calendar went out of business earlier this year after being decommissioned by Microsoft. Since that app is useless, Microsoft should replace it. The point is that many consider the new Outlook, which is a web application, to be worse than Mail & Calendar.
Surprisingly, Microsoft will also ship a new feature to Windows 10 with the same update that replaces Mail & Calendar. The February security update will add a rich calendar experience that shows the weather within the calendar on the taskbar.
New Xbox controller
Normally, a new Xbox controller design would be small news. New controllers are cool and collectible, but they’re often not one of the biggest stories of the week. But to The Pulse Cipher was announced in a unique waycreating a stir.
Before any official announcement of the Pulse Cipher controller, a mysterious listing appeared on Amazon for an unidentified Xbox controller. At the time, we knew the controller cost $74.99, but we didn’t have any other details. The mystery led to much speculation. Although we knew that the listing was not for the mythical Sebile controllerI think some hoped it was.
Ultimately, the page turned out to be for the Red Cipher controller, which will arrive on February 18, 2025. Microsoft confirmed which controller it was, Amazon removed its listing for the item, and Microsoft pulled its page for the controller.
OpenAI standards
OpenAI’s o3 AI model may have performed well in benchmarks due to already knowing the answers to the test. That’s the claim that has surfaced recently, at least.
A post on Reddit’s r/singularity subreddit discussed OpenAI’s relationship with FrontierMath, a benchmarking tool from Epoch AI used for testing AI models:
“Frontier Math, the most advanced standard of recent mathematics, is funded by OpenAI. OpenAI is supposed to have access to problems and solutions. This is disappointing because the standard was sold to the public as a tool to evaluate frontier models, with support from well-known Mathematicians in reality, Epoch AI is building datasets for OpenAI.
Epoch AI Associate Director Tamay Besiroglu acknowledged that OpenAI has access to “a large portion of FrontierMath’s problems and solutions,” but he specified that there is a dataset that OpenAI does not have access to. Besiroglu said there was a verbal agreement that OpenAI would not use those materials for training, which was not enough to quell criticism.
hearing
Last week’s biggest review was of the latest graphics card from NVIDIA. In ours RTX 5090 reviewOur own Ben Wilson explains that while the new GPU is “the best consumer graphics card in the world,” it’s ultimately not worth it for most people.
“While NVIDIA’s admirable efforts to redesign and slim down its flagship GeForce RTX graphics card have paid off with a performance increase comparable to its MSRP, it’s still virtually impossible to recommend the RTX 5090 FE to every gamer. PC level,” Wilson said.
The RTX 5090’s 575W power draw somewhat diminishes its performance gains compared to the previous generation.
Our experts also got an up-close look at a portable dual monitor and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
bids
Whether you want to play on the go, get work done at your desk, or soak up the nostalgia with a remake of a classic game, I doubt you want to pay full price for technology if you don’t need to. Our team of experts scours the web to find the best deals on PCs, game consoles, software and games. Here are the best deals that are still live.
