Windows and Surface live blog: On the ground at Microsoft’s event

Microsoft and Nvidia unveiled the Surface Laptop Ultra featuring the RTX Spark chip at a San Francisco event. The device and its accompanying accessories, the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box and other components of the Spark ecosystem, are available for pre-order with shipping set for October 16.

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella, Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, and Windows and Devices head Pavan Davuluri presented the new technologies. Huang lauded the device as a complete reinvention of the personal computer, while Nadella highlighted the event as building the frontier ecosystem, anchored in Microsoft's AI offerings.

The Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599, with the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box priced at $5,999. Both are pre-orderable and will ship on October 16, alongside devices from Asus, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and MSI. The 4.5-pound system boasts the brightest peak HDR on a laptop and features a magnetic USB-C charger dubbed "magnetic connect."

Windows 11 introduces new quick actions in the Taskbar, enabling users to perform tasks like taking screenshots or arranging windows through natural language. The Taskbar will also launch Copilot when prompted. Microsoft also showcased local models from vendors like Hermes, OpenClaw, and Perplexity, which ran on the Surface Laptop Ultra. Meta's Muse is set to arrive on Windows.

A new setup for Windows AI agents will simplify their configuration. Microsoft also announced DGX Spark and Station for Windows, a supercomputer that will bring frontier technology to desktops, initially exclusive to Linux. Copilot and local agents now have access to local files and models, and can perform tasks based on user requests, switching to cloud models when privacy is a concern.