Category Archives: Copilot+ PCs

Copilot+ PCs, Hardware Reviews, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Yog7X2 Revisited, 10 Days In

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One week ago Tuesay, Fed-Ex dropped a nifty new Lenovo Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11 at my door. That’s why it’s named Yog7X2 on my network, for “Yoga Slim 7X, Snapdragon X2 model.” TLDR version of my recent experience using it as a daily driver is: “It’s a peach.” Indeed this piece of review text about Yog7X2 revisited, 10 days into my experience is no mere first look. It reflects my experience on this laptop, chewing through deadlines, long-running scripting sessions, video calls and teleconferences, and extended Copilot sessions. My report is almost entirely positive, with only a few minor nits to pick.

Re-Speccing Yog7X2 Revisited, 10 Days In

Just for the record, here’s a quick overview of what Yog7X2 brings to the party. The 7X Gen 11 runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite (X2E-88-100) — that’s second-generation Snapdragon X Elite silicon, not a rebadge of the 2024 parts. That distinction matters more than the spec sheet suggests. The first wave of Copilot+ PCs was impressive hardware wrapped around a compatibility story with certain gotchas. Two years on, most of that has quietly sorted itself out. My daily toolchain — Edge, Word, PowerShell, a handful of Win32 utilities — runs natively or transparently through emulation without me having to think about it. That’s exactly how it should be.

The review configuration I’ve been running ships with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, paired with an 8-bit 1920×1200 OLED display. Lenovo’s configurator puts that at $1,650-1,750, depending on timing and promotions. The base model starts at $1,099. For what you get here, the price-to-capability ratio is genuinely competitive — but we’ll get to that.

The Battery Story

I want to be precise about this, because I won’t throw superlatives around lightly. I’ve been using laptops as my primary work machines since the early 1990s. In that entire span — Intel machines, AMD machines, ultrabooks, workstation-class slabs, every category you can name — I have never gotten genuine all-day battery life. Not once. There was always a charger within arm’s reach by mid-afternoon, if not sooner.

My normal workload is not gentle. On any given workday I’m running Edge with more tabs open than I care to admit, writing in Word, banging out blog drafts, running PowerShell scripts, diving into Windows event logs, and doing the kind of system tuning and troubleshooting that keeps the lights on around here. Not gaming. Not video rendering. But not exactly browsing cat photos either.

On the Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11, I routinely close out a full working day — eight-plus hours of active use — with battery to spare. I’ve stopped automatically reaching for the charger when I sit down to work. That is genuinely new behavior for me, and I’m not entirely sure I trust it yet. But nearly two weeks in, it keeps happening.

The published benchmarks back this up. PCMag measured 20 hours 16 minutes in their battery rundown test. CNET’s reviewer reported nearly 24 hours under their methodology. Real-world mixed-workload numbers will always differ from a controlled rundown script at 150 nits, but even my demanding day falls comfortably within the machine’s range. The math works.

The credit goes to Qualcomm’s Oryon v3 CPU architecture. These cores are built around aggressive power-gating and efficiency in a way that x86 designs still struggle to match at this thermal envelope — and remember, this is a machine that is 0.51 inches thin and weighs 2.9 lbs. There is no magic here, just a fundamentally different approach to how the chip uses (or doesn’t use) its power budget.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know not to take marketing claims about battery life at face value. This one’s different.

Display and Keyboard: Lenovo Keeps It Up!

The OLED panel — 1920×1200 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision certified, DisplayHDR True Black 1000 rated — is the kind of display that makes you look at everything twice. Laptop Mag measured it at 155% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. At 162 PPI on a 14-inch screen, text is sharp enough that I’ve caught myself checking whether anti-aliasing is doing anything at all. Blacks are genuinely black, not “dark grey in a dim room” black. It’s glossy, which means reflections are a real consideration in bright environments, but for document work and long writing sessions, it’s stunning.

The keyboard is excellent, and I say that as someone who has spent years on ThinkPads. Yoga Slim models skip the TrackPoint eraser puck that ThinkPad loyalists — myself included, some days — know and love. But they bring everything else. Key travel is satisfying, the layout is sensible, the function-row behavior is configurable, and the spacebar has never missed a beat. XDA Developers and Android Headlines both called it one of the best keyboards on any Windows ultraportable. Two weeks of heavy typing confirms that verdict.

The touchpad is large, accurate, and well-tuned. Lenovo’s touchpad calibration remains class-leading on the Windows side — no complaints there. One honest caveat: the keyboard deck does have a very slight flex under hard typing pressure. Not a dealbreaker, and honestly easy to forget about after the first day. But if you press down firmly in the middle of the deck, you’ll feel it. Worth knowing before you spend $1,600 or more…

Windows Hello Does the Job

The Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11 ships with a 9MP IR webcam — native resolution of 3840×2400 — which puts it in a completely different class from the pedestrian 1080p cameras most Windows laptops still ship with in 2026. The gap between “has Windows Hello” and “has Windows Hello that actually works well” is wider than most people realize until they use the real thing.

My experience: the face recognition fires quickly after lid open. No perceptible delay, no “hold still for a moment” pause, no second attempt. It just authenticates. More to the point, it recognizes me both with and without my reading glasses, without any hesitation either way. That is not trivially true of all Windows Hello IR cameras — I’ve owned machines where swapping eyewear or changing room lighting was enough to trip the thing up and send me to the PIN fallback. Not here.

The IR sensor handles varied ambient lighting without complaint. LED overhead lighting in my home office, dimmer evening conditions — it doesn’t care. It just works. The 9MP sensor also means video calls look genuinely good, not just “acceptable for a laptop camera.” The webcam supports up to 1440p video output, and on a call it shows. Touch screen support is pretty great, too. I miss that on the Zenbook A14 so I appreciate it even more here on the Yog7X2.

Windows Hello has been part of the Windows story since 2015. It has taken this long — and a camera this capable — to make the feature feel fully baked. Better late than never, I suppose.

Performance: Good for Any Laptop, Full Stop

The Snapdragon X2 Elite (X2E-88-100) delivers performance that I would describe as genuinely competitive with any thin-and-light laptop on the market. Not “impressive for ARM” — impressive, full stop. My daily workload of PowerShell scripting, multi-tab Edge browsing, Word, event log analysis, and general system tuning runs without stutter, lag, or hesitation. App launch times are snappy. The machine never feels like it’s working hard, even when I’m throwing a lot at it simultaneously.

Windows on ARM compatibility is no longer the obstacle it once was. The overwhelming majority of my tools run natively on Snapdragon. The few that still go through emulation do so transparently — no perceptible performance penalty, no workflow interruption. That was emphatically not the story two years ago, and it’s worth saying plainly: the platform has matured.

The machine handles all of this inside a 0.51-inch, 2.9-pound chassis, and it does it silently. Under my normal load, the fans are simply not a factor. That used to be the price of admission for real performance in this class — fan noise as a constant companion. Not here. Two weeks in, I’ve yet to find a workload that makes it flinch.

Net-Net: Nice-Nice

Two weeks in, the Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11 has done something rare: it has exceeded expectations on exactly the things that matter most to how I actually work. The battery life is the headline, full stop. The display and keyboard are the supporting cast that make every hour in front of the machine a pleasure. And Windows Hello, of all things, turns out to be the pleasant surprise that keeps on giving.

My only nits to pick are minor. My review unit shipped with Windows Home, which I immediately upgraded to Pro for remote access and Hyper-V support. Keyboard flex does occur in the middle. Surprisingly, there’s no headphone jack and the external speakers are noticeably mid-level in clarity and tone. Though it does have USB-C ports on both sides (2 left, 1 right) it has no USB-A  nor HDMI. For me, none of these is a deal-killer. I’ve learned to like this laptop quite a bit, in fact.

I’ll have more to say about Windows on ARM compatibility and the Snapdragon X2 Elite’s full performance story in a follow-up post. There’s real depth there worth unpacking, and it deserves its own space. Stay tuned.

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Cool Tools, Copilot+ PCs, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11, Windows OS Musings

NVIDIA Extends ARM on Windows’ Reach

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Just a couple of weeks ago, Lenovo sent me the Qualcomm X2-based Yoga Slim 7X Gen 11 laptop. Over the weekend, NVIDIA upped the ante with a Computex announcement of its RTX Spark CPU, also ARM-based. Developer in collaboration with MediaTek, this new CPU family, aka N1 and N1X, shows that NVIDIA extends ARM on Windows’ reach. Indeed Microsoft has announced a “Surface Laptop Ultra” build around this silicon, and ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and MSI are also on the bandwagon. Acer and Gigabyte will follow shortly after that, and we’ll have both laptops and desktops running RTX Spark to choose among. Big news!

What NVIDIA Extends ARM on Windows’ Reach Means

Let me be clear about what’s going on with this upcoming architecture and systems that will use it. It’s aimed squarely at the top end of the market. I’m guessing such systems could easily cost upwards of US$5K, because they are aiming at high-end creators and AI developers.

Here’s a list of noteworthy features that NVIDIA and the OEMs are touting as relevant to potential buyers of such top-flight PCs:

  • Up to 6,144‑core Blackwell RTX GPU for high‑performance graphics, AI acceleration, and workstation‑class compute in thin‑and‑light designs.
  • 20‑core Arm‑based Grace CPU (co‑developed with MediaTek) delivering strong performance‑per‑watt for mobile and small‑form‑factor desktops.
  • Up to 1 petaFLOP FP4 AI compute enabling local execution of large AI models, agentic workflows, and advanced inference without cloud dependency.
  • Unified memory architecture (16–128GB LPDDR5X) shared between CPU and GPU, reducing bottlenecks and enabling massive 3D scenes, large‑context LLMs, and high‑resolution media workflows.
  • Ultra‑low power envelope (single‑digit watts to ~80W) allowing OEMs to build ultra‑slim laptops with all‑day battery life while retaining workstation‑class performance.
  • Full RTX software stack support (CUDA, TensorRT, DLSS 4.5, OptiX, Reflex, G‑SYNC) for creators, developers, and gamers on Windows.
  • Native support for on‑device AI agents via NVIDIA OpenShell and Windows 11 optimizations, positioning PCs as proactive “teammates” rather than passive tools.
  • High‑bandwidth NVLink‑C2C interconnect (600 GB/s) between CPU and GPU for low‑latency, high‑throughput compute.
  • Advanced media engines including 4:2:2 hardware encode/decode, AV1 encoders, and Blackwell‑class video pipelines for 12K editing and pro‑grade content creation.

A LOT to Take In, MORE Left to Understand

Whoa! That’s a lot of capability with a pretty rarified set of target buyers. Given current RAM and storage pricing, and rising costs for PC hardware in general, it’s clearly a small sliver of the market. But it’s got huge potential, and could ultimately redefine how Windows works — for a certain subset of users/consumers.

I think it’s pretty cool. I hope I’ll get  a chance to check one out later this year. In the long run, though, what will make the difference is how and when such special capabilities trickle down to garden-variety PC users. I’m intensely curious to watch this unfold, and see how it all plays out. Stay tuned: I’ll keep you posted!

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WinRE Ignores Inactive HDMI Output

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I guess it figures. If you examine yesterday’s blog post carefully, you’ll see it includes an obvious iPhone shot of a Windows boot screen. I’d hoped to replace it with a real screencap. Instead, I learned something interesting: my AGPTEK HD Video Capture device works fine with Windows OS running; not so with WinRE/WinPE at the helm. That’s because WinRE ignores inactive HDMI output ports thanks to its slimmed-down minimal graphics. Let me explain…

Why Say: WinRE Ignores Inactive HDMI Output

Simply put, if the runtime environment doesn’t require HDMI graphics, WinRE doesn’t use them. Given that the ASUS Zen14 has a perfectly good built-in display, with its own video channel, WinRE doesn’t feed any signals to the external HDMI port when it’s running.

My AGPTEK HD Video Capture box will cheerfully record any signals sent its way, once its “Record” button is pushed. It writes output to a UFD, from whence it may be copied and edited. I could have used it to capture a frame from said video showing the boot screens I wanted, but the box couldn’t grab them.

What WOULD Work?

It turns out I need an active frame-grabbing device not a passive, pass-through capture device if I want to grab WinRE and other WinPE-based screens through the HDMI port on the A14. Most of them cost between US$240 and 450, whereas the AGPTEK cost me US$65. Here in Windows-World, once must make sure to pay for what one needs. Otherwise, when one gets what one has paid for, it may not suffice to meet them! Live and learn, I always say…so obviously, I’ve learned that I need to buy another box!

 

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ASUS Snapdragon Shows Odd Boot Anomaly

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Here is a puzzle that took me longer than I care to admit to fully unpack. I built a recovery USB — clean DISM export, proper bootloader, everything by the book — set it first in the UEFI boot order, and rebooted an ASUS A14 Zenbook expecting to land in a familiar Windows Recovery Environment. Instead, I got the ASUS recovery stub. Every single time. I moved the USB higher in the boot order. I tried the firmware boot menu. I watched the machine apparently select the USB and then, silently and without apology, drop me into ASUS’s own mini-recovery UI anyway. The drive was not defective. The boot order was correct. The machine just did not care. This is my reason for saying: ASUS Snapdragon shows odd boot anomaly.

Getting Past ASUS Snapdragon Shows Odd Boot Anomaly

What I kept landing in was not Microsoft’s WinRE. It was ASUS’s recovery stub from firmware. It’s a minimal launcher, typically just a few hundred megabytes, that presents three or four tiles: Reset this PC, ASUS Recovery, and Advanced options. It looks vaguely like WinRE. It shares some ancestry with winre.wim. But it is ASUS’s gatekeeper, not Microsoft’s recovery environment, and it exists specifically to intercept the boot process before you can get anywhere else.

Here is the mechanism. ASUS, like most Tier-1 OEMs, configures its UEFI firmware with a hardcoded recovery boot path that fires during the BDS (Boot Device Selection) phase. It hits before the standard UEFI boot manager even looks at the user’s boot order. The firmware scans the internal NVMe for a partition stamped with a specific GPT partition type GUID — not the ordinary Microsoft Basic Data GUID, but a dedicated Recovery GUID or a custom OEM namespace. When it finds that partition, it hands control to the stub immediately. Your carefully ordered boot menu is consulted afterward, if at all. The USB was never really in the running.

Secure Boot adds a second layer of obstruction. Let’s say your hand-built USB carries an unsigned or self-signed bootloader (common with DISM-assembled media not signed against Microsoft’s KEK). Then,  the firmware rejects it silently and falls through to the next trusted entry in its internal list. That entry is the ASUS stub. So even when the BDS phase does get as far as examining external media, an unsigned USB is invisible. The machine looks like it’s ignoring you. It is, technically, but for a specific cryptographic reason (yes, really).

The WIM Recompression Tax

Once you understand why your DIY USB is being locked out, it helps to understand what the OEM actually ships in its place. It also explains why making a genuine ASUS recovery drive takes the better part of an hour. It starts with WIM compression. Microsoft’s stock winre.wim uses LZX compression and typically lands somewhere between 500 MB and 1 GB on disk. Manageable. Sensible. But ASUS’s customised image, once you add the recovery launcher, platform drivers, UI payloads, and potentially a full factory image, can balloon to several gigabytes of uncompressed data before anyone has touched the compression knob.

When you kick off the “Create ASUS Recovery Drive” process in MyASUS, what actually happens under the hood is a DISM /Export-Image /Compress:max operation (or its functional equivalent)  applied to an enormous source WIM. Maximum LZX compression, and on newer builds you may even see solid-block LZMS compression, which squeezes harder but runs even slower.

Here’s the critical detail: WIM compression in DISM is largely single-threaded. It reads every file, applies the compression algorithm, writes the output, and verifies integrity as it goes, all on one logical core (yes, really). On an otherwise fast NVMe-equipped laptop, that process still takes 40 to 55 minutes, not because the machine is slow, but because the algorithm is doing an enormous amount of intense, serialised work. The hardware isn’t at fault; the workload is.

Getting to USB-Based (Alternate) Boot

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Getting external media to boot on an ASUS machine requires working around the firmware, not just the boot order. There are two reliable paths. First: disable Secure Boot in UEFI setup (DEL at POST, not F8 — more on that distinction in a moment). With Secure Boot off, unsigned bootloaders no longer get silently rejected. Second: on older platforms with CSM support, enabling CSM forces a legacy BIOS boot path that bypasses the UEFI BDS handoff to the stub.

The Bottom Line: Build Custom Recovery Media

Whether you use the MS supplied “Create a recovery drive” facility, or turn to the MyASUS toolbox to do likewise, the best way to protect an ASUS Zenbook A14 is to build recovery media from that PC. As I learned through a series of failed recovery attempts with other, supposedly generic, all-purpose recovery media, that stuff doesn’t fly inside the Zenbook’s firmware envelope.

Learn from my mistake, and follow this advice as soon as  you can. Otherwise, you too, will fumble around until you find the MyASUS in WinRE tool that does cloud-based image reconstruction instead. If all you want is WinRE running a command prompt, that’s not a good alternative. Do it now: don’t delay!

The Secure Boot Perspective (2 Days Later)

I just ran the Garlin scripts on the recently rebuilt ASUS Zenbook A14. Looks like one benefit of a constantly updated cloud-based restore is the ability to slipstream new stuff in (or replace older, outdated images with newer, current ones). The concluding status report from  that check script is pretty telling:Shoot! They’ve even revoked the CA-2011 certificate. Good stuff!!!

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Backup/Restpre, Cloud PC, Copilot+ PCs, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Troubleshooting, WED Blog, Windows 11

Bizarre ASUS Disk Layout Is Intentional

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Wow! Wow! Wow! What an adventure I just went through. After examining the weird, seemingly fragmented disk layout shown in the lead-in graphic, I went nuts. I decided to clean install Windows 11. That’s when I learned a bunch of stuff I didn’t want to know. Chief among those things (more to follow): the bizarre ASUS disk layout is intentional. Indeed, it came back after typical clean install manuevers failed repeatedly. Ultimately, I used the “My ASUS in WinRE for USB” app to bring the unit back to life.

Why Say: Bizarre ASUS Disk Layout Is Intentional?

Short answer: because it came back on its own after running a cloud restore on the Windows 11 image on the Zenbook A14. Longer answer: the unit simply wouldn’t boot into any kind of standard recovery media that I could build by hand. I wasted more than a day trying to brute force my way into a clean install, only to realize ASUS has barred the “boot to USB” door very tightly and narrowly. Indeed, I’m very, very glad that I was able to get the unit up and running again. I’d been contemplating a run to a nearby repair shop. I’m glad it didn’t come to that — but it was close!

I’m not sure WTF is going on, that ASUS needs nine OEM partitions on its SSD drive (the 16MB one is undoubtedly the MSR). But I’ll be darned if I was able to figure out how to get rid of them. I think there are two recovery partitions (reagentc says it’s tied to Partition 15) because one is for normal Windows use, the other for ASUS’s no-doubt murky purposes.

If It Ain’t Broke…

Honestly, I should’ve known better. The unit was behaving and peforming as expected. Just because I didn’t — and still don’t — like what I see for disk layout, doesn’t mean I should’ve taken the clean install route. Now I know better.

A painful lesson learned, a day-and-a-half spent chasing phantoms. Sounds like my idea of a good time. Here in Windows-World, I take my jollies where I can find them. Think I’ve had enough of those to last me for a while, though…

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MS Readies Copilot Key Remap

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How often do I use Copilot? Multiple times a day, sometimes for hours at a go. How often do I use the Copilot key on a Copilot+ PC to access same? NEVER (I tried it out on an early laptop, saw it worked, and never used it again). I’m pretty sure most other users work the same way. Thus it came as no surprise and something of a relief to read news that MS Readies Copilot key remap in some upcoming Windows 11 update.

Why MS Readies Copilot Key Remap

This plan surfaced in a recently published Microsoft Support Note entitled ” Understand updates to the Copilot key on Windows devices,” Copilot finds no publication date for this item, but guesstimates it appeared on May 18  (yesterday, as I write this post).

Here’s how that note starts out:

Starting in 2024, hardware manufactures released new Windows 11 devices that include a dedicated Copilot key that provides quick access to Copilot experiences in Windows. This Copilot key sometimes replaces the Right Ctrl key or Context Menu key on select devices.

Customers who rely on the Right Ctrl key or Context menu key for keyboard shortcuts or assistive technologies (such as screen readers) experienced some challenges to their workflows when using these devices.

The important info comes next, and explains how things will work once this update appears:

A Windows 11 update will ship later this year that will add a setting option to let you remap the Copilot key to act as the Context menu key or Right Ctrl key. When available, you can find this setting in: Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Keyboard

What Does Copilot Key Remap Mean?

It’s an implicit ACK from MS that some (or many) people don’t use the key. Better, however, it’s a means for those who need the key that used to sit where the Copilot key now rests will get an official way to restore it (or rather, its functions as the Right CTRL or Context menu key) on their keyboards. Good enough for me!

When will this appear? MS isn’t saying yet. But they wouldn’t dangle it out there if they weren’t already working on it. My best guess is months, not longer. I’ll keep an eye on things and let you know when more news is available.

And here’s a concluding irony: I’m current working on a Logitech  Wave Keys keyboard on the Flo6 desktop. No Copilot key here, and I don’t miss it at all, not even one little bit.

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Tiny Quiet Capable ThinkCentre neo 50q

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OK, then. I finally got around to unboxing and setting up the 1L (1000 cc) mini PC that Lenovo sent to me a couple of days before Christmas. I’m pleased to say the unit is reasonably speedy, tiny and amazingly quiet in operation. Indeed, the tiny, quiet capable ThinkCenter neo 50q is the first — and only — mini-PC built around Snapdragon X that I’ve been able to lay hands on. First, Qualcomm bailed on its developer kit; second, Geekcom last year promised but never delivered a mini-PC with Snapdragon X innards. Now I finally get to see how this Qualcomm CPU and chipset serves outside the laptop space…

Deets: Tiny, Quiet Capable ThinkCentre neo 50q

It’s a bona-fide Copilot+ PC. Here’s what’s inside (including ports):

  • CPU: Snapdragon X X1-26-100 (2.97 Ghz, 8 cores)
  • OS: Windows 11 Pro (24H2 Build 26100.7462 delivered)
  • RAM: 1x16GB LPDDR5 8448
  • NVMe: Samsung OEM 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 TLC Opal
  • Wi-Fi: Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6E & Bluetooth 5.3
  • Dimensions: 179×182.9×36.5mm (Lenovo says “1L”; it’s ~1.2L)
  • Front ports: USB-A (10Gbps), USB-C (10 Gbps), mini-RCA
  • Rear ports: 4xUSB-A (10 Gbps), HDMI 2.1, DP 1.4a, GbE (RJ-45)

What’s startling here is no high-speed USB-4 (or 5) ports. No Thunderbolt, either. That means no high-speed video links via USB-C. That’s not great. But it also means no access to USB4 or Thunderbolt 4 docks from this unit. That’s not great, either.

A similarly equipped unit, but with 32GB RAM (not 16GB) goes for US$559 at the Lenovo Store right now. That seems like a good value proposition for a machine like this one. That said, I don’t understand why USB4 is MIA from this unit, even if only through a front port. On the plus side, there’s an open M.2 2280 NVMe slot into which you can plug another drive.

Initial Impressions: Speed, Capacity & Oomph

This is a peppy little PC. It blasts through a restart cycle (restart, boot, Windows startup, desktop) in 30-35 seconds right now. CrystalDiskMark shows decent but not killer numbers from the OEM Samsung MZVL81T0HDLB-00BLL 1TB PCIe x4 SSD:

During initial setup, I was able to download and install what I needed without experiencing any delays or noticeable (local) lag. A quick trip into DriverStore Explorer (RAPR.exe) showed only two out-of-date drivers amidst a collection of 269 items (1.24 GB total size: fairly small). The OS was pretty much up-to-date, but I did have to kill and clean up McAfee (which Lenovo ships pre-installed in trial form). Lenovo Vantage didn’t show an update button, so I had to download and install the Service Bridge and Lenovo Update to check the device to make sure everything was caught up (it was).

Net-Net: Nice But No Powerhouse

Whaddya expect for US$550? It’s pretty much on precise par with the ASUS Zenbook A14 I just picked up (for the same price, give or take, though the ASUS offers 2 USB4 capable USB-C ports at Best Buy). It looks like an eminently capable mini-desktop for run-of-the-mill users who don’t need lots of horsepower or storage space.

But so far, the Neo 50q seems like a great choice for SOHO and plain-vanilla home users. My wife has had aDell OPtiplex 7080 for 5 years now and loves it (curiously, it too qualifies as a “1L” mini-PC). I’m sure she would feel likewise about the Neo 50q, too.

As I get to know this PC better, I’ll write more.It’s been a small and quiet joy to set up and learn about so far…

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Notification Reveals RDP Recall Gotcha

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Here at Chez Tittel, there are 9 PCs in my office (6 laptops, 3 desktops). I tend to remote into 8 of those 9, working from my primary desktop. It’s running an Asrock B550 Extreme 4 with AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU, 128GB RAM, and an NVIDIA 3070Ti GPU. When I remoted into the ASUS Zenbook A14 this morning, a seemingly innocuous notification popped up in the RDP window, lower right. That notification reveals RDP Recall Gotcha that reads “Recall: Sign-in with Windows Hello to resume, no snapshots are being saved.”

When Notification Reveals RDP Recall Gotcha , Then What?

I followed the notification’s instruction: Walked up to the laptop, and let the camera log me in locally via facial recognition. When I fired up the RDP session again, there was no such notification showing. So, I checked Windows Hello status, and it shows that facial recognition is enabled and working for my phiz.

Then I checked Recall settings. It shows two interesting facets to what is apparently a real and present RDP gotcha:

1. For RDP to work, it’s necessary to turn off “Require Windows Hello login” in Sign-in Settings (aka “enhanced sign-in security”). For Recall to work this must be enabled.

2. Lack of enhanced sign-in security apparently makes the RDP session behave as if Windows Hello is neither enabled nor defined on this system.

Can you say “Catch-22?” Looks like if you want to use Recall on a Copilot+ PC, you can only do so through a local login. At least for me, it doesn’t work through RDP. Good to know! Though I can’t say I like this much, it is important to understand the limitations of Recall for users who might wish to take advantage of its capabilities.

Looks like Recall requires local operation. My conclusion: To use Recall (and I presume other AI features) go local, or go home. It’s always something, here in Windows-World.

 

 

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Thunderbolt 5 Status Approaching 2026

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I’ve been thinking about new technologies lately, and the hurdles that OEMs face bringing them to market. Consider that only 2% of global PC sales are Copilot+ capable (which includes TB4). In that light, it’s not surprising that the market presence of TB5 is easily summarized as “slim to none.” Even so, I wanted to report on Thunderbolt 5 status approaching 2026, and share which laptops and mobos sport this latest, greatest iteration. Here goes…

What’s Thunderbolt 5 Status Approaching 2026?

There is a small number of laptops and motherboards currently available that include (or enable) TB5 support. Thus, for example, one must purchase an ASUS mobo with a TB5-capable header AND an ASUS Thunderbolt EX expansion card, to provide TB5 ports on a desktop PC.

Tasked with finding laptops with TB5 ports, Copilot produces a list of 12 models from 7 OEMs (MSI [3], Gigabyte [1], ASUS [1], Alienware (Dell) [1], Razer [1], Lenovo [1], Dell (Business) [1], and HP [1]). All come with MSRPs that exceed US$2,000. For motherboards, there’s one — and only one — source: ASUS for Z790 and Z890 (Intel) and X670E (AMD) and a hybrid (ProArt Creator). All seem to need the aforementioned expansion card to complete the connection.

Why Is TB5 Uptake Miniscule?

First off, the Intel Barlow Ridge controller is required for TB 5. Apparently, it is ill-suited for use in smaller, lighter laptops because of its space and power requirements. Second, TB5 comes with demanding power requirements (up to 240W passthrough) which requires beefier batteries and power leads to accommodate.

Finally, TB5 delivery issues from demand. And despite its formidable capabilities (120 Gbps video, PCIe 4.0 x4 host interface, DisplayPort 2.1, and up to 240W USB-PD passthrough) there’s apparently insufficient demand to drive it into lots of desktop and laptop designs. Over time, this will change. But for the moment, TB5 looks very much like a killer design looking for market uptake and support.

 

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Copilot+ PCs, Hardware Reviews, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog

Undisappearing X13 Gen 6 PING

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I’m getting ready to return the sweet little review unit Lenovo sent me six weeks ago. It’s a ThinkPad X13 Gen 6 (see First Look from November 7). It’s endowed with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255U, 16GB RAM, and an 0.5 GB NVMe SSD. For size and heft, it’s a nominal 13″ ultra-portable (933g/2.05 lbs) that’s easy to pack up and take with you wherever you go. As I was preparing a final once-over, I found myself faced with undisappearing X13 Gen 6 PING. Let me explain…

Why I’m Undisappearing  X13 Gen 6 PING

For some odd reason, Lenovo instituted firewall rules on this eval unit that I’ve never run into before. You can see them in the lead-in graphic where they show — in brief — that for both Private and Domain LAN namespaces, inbound PING is disabled for both IPv4 and IPv6. That means this PC won’t respond to incoming PING requests from the LAN. Sigh.

That’s how Advanced IP Scanner finds PCs (among other techniques). It also explains why IPconfig on the X13 Gen 6 happily reported itself at a private IP address, but didn’t show up in the scans that tool made on my desktop. Sigh again.

This is easily fixed by changing those firewall rules to enable (YES) them, instead of disabling (NO) same. But I wonder: why did Lenovo do this? I can see this applying to boundary devices (e.g. firewalls) and servers, but haven’t really run into it much on end-user PCs. They’s usually safe behind one or more layers of external protection (2 in my case), and don’t get external PINGs. Maybe it’s a “coffee shop” scenario…? But PING is disabled on Public networks anyway. Go figure!

Closing Thoughts on the X13 Gen 6 ThinkPad

As I get ready to box this unit up, and ship it off, I’ve come to some conclusions. On the plus side, it’s light, compact and reasonably capable. I’d be inclined to upgrade the 0.5 GB SSD to 1.0 GB or bigger (with budget 2.0 GB units selling for under US$100 right now, that’s not a big stretch). Otherwise, it’s more than acceptable as-is.

On the minus side, the X13 is a little behind the curve technology wise. Alas,  this model is NOT Copilot+ capable. With its price now over US$1,500 (+US$8.45 at Best Buy, +US$138.22 at Staples) it’s nowhere near as good a deal as a lightweight Snapdragon X-equipped model in that general price range (e.g. Lenovo ThinkPad 7X or Asus Zenbook A14).

Such models usually come equipped with 1 TB SSDs from the get-go, offer better battery life (12+ hours for SnapdragonX models vs. 7-10 hours for the X13), and are on par or better for performance and capability. That said, ARM PCs still have their Windows quirks and limitations, too. Here in Windows-World choosing a laptop always involves certain trade-offs, eh? I’ve come down on the Copilot+ side of things, and remain amazed that less than 2% of new PC purchased globally qualify as such. Given MS’s emphasis on AI, why buy anything else?

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