TOP STORIES #26

A couple of big stories here to do with Microsoft removing software, Google Launching DUET and OpenAI getting ready for the enterprise.

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As you are reading all this below - pause to ponder that 2025 is only 2 years (and a bit) away.

Hardware

Intel Meteor Lake will extend battery life

The new generation of CPU's with a VPU to process AI workloads will also include intelligence to extend your notebook's battery life. What you are getting is AI processing capability without power-hungry external GPU's but also AI to make the overall CPU work more efficiently. You can read more about this here.

In the bigger scheme of things Gen 14, Meteor Lake is Gen. 1 of our new AI roadmap!

Thunderbolt 4 - What to know

Thunderbolt 4 is rapidly becoming the standard for most new computers from the 13th generation of CPUs onward. Although TB4 is not really faster than TB3, the specifications are more rigid including full backward compatibility. You can read more about understanding TB 4's specifications here. It is very important when writing your specification for a new round of notebook purchases you insist that they must support TB4 as we may very well see TB5 at double the capability by 2025 for external devices that will be downward compatible with old "legacy" TB 4 notebooks.

Microsoft

WordPad is to be removed from Windows

WordPad will be removed from Windows in the future. This has been part of the Operating System since Windows 95 - it has been around for longer than Google has been a company! Google is only 25 years old this year!

WordPad was really Microsoft's "Free" Word Processor, but for the future, you must use O365 or if you want something free, then there are many other options like LibreOffice.

Teams to be Removed from O365 (in EU and Switzerland)

This move is in response to addressing EU competition concerns.

Microsoft has announced that Teams will now be unbundled from O365 and will be available separately for $60 per year, but the price of Office 365 is reduced by $24 per year. Teams Essentials has had its pricing adjusted as well, as per the FAQ here.

It does not appear that South Africa (or the UK for that matter) will fall under the changes for the EU, but we still need to get official confirmation.

It is still early days, and we are still to get an official reaction from the EU, Slack and others, though the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing has already published commentary here,

It gets more complicated for companies that have existing agreements and have divisions in other parts of the world, as you will have to elect to switch to the new unbundled SKU's.

For more details on this interesting development, you can read more here, and of course, The Register has its own take on this affair.

Security

One for the Good Guys

FBI has taken down one of the biggest botnets in the world.

Sometimes one needs to hear about the goods guys - read more about this here.

Cloud & AI

Google Doc's Gets Proofreading as part of DUET

Google's advanced features are now available as Duet which is also prices the same as Microsoft's CoPilot at $360 per year. An interesting part of Duet's skills is the proofreading capability that may well give Grammarly a run for it's money, though Grammarly has a very good free offering. It's still early days, and Duet's value proposition is still a bit confusing for now. There is also a video on some of the features which you can watch here which will remind you a bit of CoPilot can also do, and more on how it stacks up against CoPilot here.

OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Enterprise

OpenAI has launched a version of GPT-4 for companies that removes all usage caps and expands the context WIndow to 32K (about 24K Words) with all communication encrypted. Read more on whats to offer here.

AI will shape future jobs

According to the World Economic Forum 50% of employees will need re-skilling by 2025 as the adoption of technology increases with AI already having a big impact. This is an interesting article to read here.

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