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I tested the most affordable Copilot+ laptop I could find and it surprised me

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Asus Vivobook 14

MSRP $649.99

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“Asus Vivobook 14 is a good template for serving the best of Windows 11 on an affordable and practically rewarding platter”

Pros

  • Solid trackpad and decent keyboard
  • Sufficient selection of ports
  • Decent performance for the price
  • Reliable battery with fast charging
  • Generous memory for 2026
  • Windows Hello for biometric lock

Cons

  • Display could’ve been better
  • Plastic flexes on lid and deck
  • Fan can get noisy
  • Random performance hiccups

What makes a good laptop? Well, I can give a pretty haphazard answer to that. But if I were to give a broad verdict, I would say any PC that gets the job done without nuking your wallet, heating like a pan, and lasting at least a full day without forcing you to hunt for a wall socket, takes the cake.

Apple has mastered that art with the MacBook Air, and to such an extent that shoppers have no qualms spending on two, or even three-generation-old, machines. Windows, thanks in no part to the extreme fragmentation, has struggled with the idea.

With Intel Evo-certified PCs, an attempt was made, but they just couldn’t hit the performance-efficiency levels of a MacBook. Then came Qualcomm with its Snapdragon silicon for Windows-on-Arm machines bearing the Copilot+ branding. The vision was squarely a Mac-killer machine at various price points.

Now that we are headed into the second generation of Qualcomm-powered laptops, I took a leap of faith away from my trusty M4 MacBook Air and fired up the cheapest Cipolot+ laptop I could find – the Asus Vivobook 14, which is currently going for $649 from the brand’s online marketplace, and often dips lower during sales events. 

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Did I regret it? Not exactly. On the contrary, I came out fairly impressed with the machine, though not without a few harsh learnings. 

A quick look at the specs

Color Cool Silver, Quiet Blue
Operating System Windows 11 Home (ASUS recommends Windows 11 Pro for business)
Processor Snapdragon X (X1 26 100) (30MB Cache, up to 2.97GHz, 8 cores, 8 Threads)
Neural Processor Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (up to 45TOPS)
Graphics Qualcomm Adreno GPU
Display 14.0-inch LED Backlit, 60Hz, 45% NTSC, Anti-glare (87% screen-to-body ratio)
Memory 16GB LPDDR5X on board (Max 16GB)
Storage 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD
I/O Ports 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A; 2x USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C; 1x HDMI 2.1; 1x 3.5mm Jack
Camera FHD camera with IR function (Windows Hello) and privacy shutter
Keyboard Backlit Chiclet Keyboard, 1.7mm Key-travel, Precision touchpad
Audio Smart Amp Technology, Built-in speaker, Built-in array microphone
Connectivity Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) + Bluetooth 5.3
Battery 50WHrs, 3S1P, 3-cell Li-ion
Power Supply 65W AC Adapter (Type-C)
Weight 1.49 kg (3.28 lbs)
Dimensions 31.52 x 22.34 x 1.79 ~ 1.99 cm

What worked? 

I will start with the value perspective first. Asus is more generous with the memory situation on the Vivobook 14 than Apple, matching the memory at 16GB, but offering a healthy 512GB storage on the base model. For anyone who wishes to use their PC for at least the next half a decade, this is the bare minimum.

I keep my media editing work restricted to the iPad Pro, and it’s a headache. Beyond the cumulative burden of OS updates, the gradual app installs fill up the storage sooner than I would like. Whether you need a machine for work, or college duties, Asus offers a better value for your money if you have an Apple comparison in mind. 

Then we have the port situation. Yes, the MacBook Air is sleek, but that comes at the cost of a terrible port selection. And the only way to survive the MacBook Air lifestyle is a dongle. Asus’ affordable laptop won’t outdo Apple’s laptop in the looks department, but it trades a svelte waistline for a reasonable diversity of ports. 

You get a pair of USB-C and USB-A ports each, alongside an HDMI port and a 3.5mm combo jack. Now, you may not always use all the ports, but on the days when you are struggling with an external monitor, charger, storage device, and an input device, you really appreciate the I/O versatility at hand. 

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Another neat perk, and an expected one at the current asking price, is the IR camera kit for face unlock. On modern PCs, biometric unlock is an extremely underrated perk, especially in an age where passkeys are taking over conventional passwords for identity verification. 

The keyboard isn’t bad either. There’s plenty of travel, the keycaps are spaced well, and despite the slight wobble, I actually loved typing on it more than my MacBook Air. The keys offer a springy feedback, and there’s a satisfying resistance, as well. There’s a bit of flex in the central portion of the deck, but not enough to hamper the typing experience. 

The display is a mixed bag. The 14-inch panel offers a full-HD resolution, which is fairly standard for the price. But it doesn’t fare well in well-lit surroundings. I mostly work in a dark room, but every time I stepped out for a cafe work session, or the nearby park, I had to crank the brightness all the way up to the 100%, and still felt a tad underwhelmed. 

Thankfully, it’s not a glossy panel, so reflection was never much of a problem. Out of the box, the display has an odd tint to it, and I had to manually adjust the temperature to make it look neutral. And yeah, the saturation could definitely be better. The Asus laptop, however, is hiding a cool trick. 

In the MyAsus app, there’s an E-reading mode that gives a monochrome tint to the screen. All the content is rendered in black and white, and you can even adjust the grayscale level. You also get an eye-care mode, with five levels of blue light reduction. I often found myself juggling between these two modes as they tangibly reduced the eye strain, while the e-ink mode helped me with an extra dose of focus. 

Another cool trick is hiding on the trackpad. It’s serviceable on its own, but I loved the edge gestures. Across the left and right edges, you can slide to adjust the volume and brightness levels, while the top edge helps with media playback. I love these thoughtful additions, which go beyond gimmicks and don’t burden you with a learning curve either. 

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Performance 

The Snapdragon X is a rather odd processor, which is both good and bad news. For example, it fares almost as well as the MacBook Air… with the three-generation-old M2 chip on Cinebench at multi-core output, but the Oryon core can’t quite drive ahead of the single-core performance. 

That’s both good and bad news. Apple’s M-series silicon is terrific, and I have friends and family members still holding on tightly to their M1-powered machines. On the Windows side of the ecosystem, the Vivobook 14 raced ahead of Intel’s Core Ultra 5 226V, and the equivalent Intel Core 12th Gen processor at Geekbench runs 

Paired with 16 gigs of RAM and speedy SSDs, the Asus laptop fared pretty well at my day-to-day tasks. It handled Slack, Teams, Chrome with two dozen tabs, and Copoilt with ease. For academic use and basic corporate work restricted to Workspace and Office suites, there’s enough firepower available here. 

But what holds this machine back — and nearly every Windows on Arm machine that I have tested so far – is the inconsistency. On days, the Asus laptop felt buttery smooth. And then there were occasions where it randomly crashed under the stress of a few Chrome windows. Another recurring problem is the update situation, which often left me staring at a blank screen and required a force restart. 

Where Qualcomm needs to work, especially when compared against Intel’s Arc and AMD’s Radeon graphics architecture, is the integrated Adreno GPU. On 3DMark Steel Nomad, I got an average tally of around 9fps after three test runs, while an in-game benchmark only reached 18fps.  Needless to say, gaming is a distant pipedream, and your only hope is cloud services such as Xbox or GeForce Now. 

I wish the fans were a tad less noisy. Even under the stress of web-based work, you can hear them whirring. Thankfully, I didn’t notice any overt heating or scenarios where the laptop became too hot to keep on the lap. Whisper mode offers some respite from the fan house, but to avoid the heat build-up and throttling, I preferred working with the fan profile set to Full-Speed mode. Thankfully, my earbuds helped deal with the noise. 

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But when I pushed it while editing videos in Filmora, the upper area of the keyboard deck ran noticeably hotter.  What bothered me more was the resource allocation. Between two windows and a total of eight apps in total, the system was using 80% of the memory, which is way too much, while the CPU load remained comfortably under the 18% range. 

Battery life

This is one aspect where the Asus Vivobook 14 really surprised me. I was expecting it to be a mediocre performer, but it actually proved to be a workhorse. With Power Mode set to balanced, the laptop managed around 11 hours of work in my most recent run, with the screen brightness set close to the 60% mark. 

Dialing up to the high-performance mode, the device still managed around eight to nine hours of consistent work before I saw the first low-battery alert. It’s evident that the entry-level Snapdragon X silicon is focusing more on efficiency, instead of raw performance. This approach, I believe, works well for a machine like the Vivobook 14.

I’ve tested over a dozen Windows machines in as many months, but this Asus machine offered the best mileage in the Snapdragon pool for its size, and fared better than Intel machines from rival brands. If your budget is strictly close to the $700 mark, you already have a certain performance expectation in mind. 

The Asus Vivobook 14 isn’t exactly blowing past those expectations, but it delivers solid results with battery efficiency. The hiccup was the edge scenarios, where I needed the machine to focus more on creative workflows at high performance levels, and the drop in battery levels was haphazardly aggressive. 

On the bright side, the laptop offers a few meaningful tricks within the MyAsus app. There’s a dedicated battery care mode that limits peak charging to the 80% mark, similar to iPhones, in order to preserve its longevity. But for scenarios where you want the full juice for on-the-go work sessions, you can temporarily bypass it for 24-hours and get the full 100% juice.

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Verdict 

The Asus Vivobook 14 is a laptop that cuts some expected corners, but delivers in a few unexpected ways. It’s got a kit that’s easy on the eyes, but raises the bar with a military-grade (MIL-STD 810H) build. For students and workers who commute daily, this is an underrated perk that can save you hundreds of dollars in accidental repairs and servicing. 

On to the topic of battery life, this laptop does a fine job, and support for fast charging (an hour of plugged-in time for a full tank)  is just the cherry on top. Now, I don’t know many souls out there who want a laptop specifically for native Copilot AI perks, but if you’re one of those souls, this Asus laptop is a bargain deal that qualifies for all the Copilot+ AI perks, such as on-device translations, AI-powered image editing, and Windows Recall.

The performance is enough for the asking price, though not exactly an Earth-scorcher. As a sweet bargain for not setting the benchmark tables on fire, you get plenty of ports (with ample diversity), a large trackpad with practical tricks, convenient biometric unlock with a physical privacy shutter, and a decent set of speakers that get the job done, but won’t exactly wow your ear canals. 

At an asking price of $649 (and even lower, if you’re a good deal-hunter), the Asus Vivobook 14 is a lovely laptop for its target audience. And at a time when the industry is staring at rising PC prices owing to an unprecedented memory crisis, this laptop feels like a bargain in stormy days for market.

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Onerep vs Incogni (2026): Which Data Removal Service Delivers Better Protection?

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Right now, deleting a couple of public listings of your personal information is hardly enough to reduce your digital presence in any significant way. What’s more, your data circulates not only across people-search sites but also in marketing networks, analytics firms, recruitment databases, or risk-profiling systems, and many of these sources you’re incapable of reaching on your own.

That’s why it’s worth investing in a reliable data removal service with its automation, recurring requests, and the breadth of broker coverage.

Incogni and Onerep are two established providers in the data removal service field. To help you decide, we compare them below, clarifying where each company stands today.

Quick Comparison (2026)

Feature Incogni Onerep
Pricing From $7.99/month (annual billing) From $8.33/month (annual billing)
Removal model Fully automated with recurring requests Mixed automation + manual handling
Broker coverage 420+ private and public brokers 300+ websites, mostly public people-search listings
Free tier 30-day money-back guarantee 5-day trial, 30-day money-back guarantee
Recurring removal cycles Every 60-90 days Monthly
Independent verification Deloitte Limited Assurance assessment None publicly reported
Customer support Email, live chat (subscribers), phone (Unlimited subscribers), Knowledge Base Email (plan-dependent), support tickets, dedicated privacy expert (higher tiers), phone, Help Desk

Onerep vs Incogni: Service Snapshot & Core Positioning

Incogni Onerep
Year founded 2021 2015
Company type Automated data broker removal platform People-search directory removal service
Primary scope Public and private broker ecosystem Public-facing, searchable directories
Automation structure Fully automated, recurring cycles Hybrid model: automation + privacy expert
Data reappearance prevention model Automated recurring legal re-requests every 60–90 days Monitoring and suppression of relisted directory entries
Editorial recognition Editors’ Choice Awards – PCMag and PCWorld No major 2026 editorial awards reported
Independent verification Limited Assurance Assessment by Deloitte Not publicly reported
Trustpilot 4.4/5 (2,000+ reviews) 4.7/5 (380+ reviews)
Global availability 34 countries Primarily US

Onerep vs Incogni: Pricing & Plans (March, 2026)

Incogni

Incogni starts at $7.99 per month when billed annually. If paid monthly, it’s from $15.98 per month. All its plans include automated removal across 420+ brokers and recurring processing by default. Higher tiers provide expanded support options or add prioritization.

Incogni is also bundled with other data protection ecosystems: with NordProtect or included in Surfshark One+ subscription. This allows users to expand their privacy toolkit and integrate data removal into a unified, broader suite.

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Incogni doesn’t offer any free tiers or trials, but there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. Family and enterprise options are available.

Onerep

Onerep’s cheapest plan is $8.33 per month if billed annually. Billed annually, the prices start at $14.95 per month. It offers a 5-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Family and enterprise plans are available.

Onerep is a standalone subscription, not available combined with larger privacy suites.

Broker Coverage

Incogni Onerep
420+ brokers 300+ sites
Custom removals from an additional 2,000+ sites with Unlimited plans Public people-search directories focus
Public-search sites Opt-out requests sent to supported listing sites 
Marketing data brokers Monitoring and relisting suppression
risk and background profiling companies Not engaged with private marketing or profiling networks
Risk and background profiling companies
recurring requests every 60 days for public and 90 days for private listings
Recurring requests every 60 days for public and 90 days for private listings

As such, the difference between Incogni and Onerep when it comes to coverage lies less in whether removals occur at all and more in how broadly data sources are covered.

Transparency, Verification & Public Trust

Incogni

Incogni provides a clear dashboard with request logs and their statuses that you can track, but don’t have to for the system to work efficiently

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The company has also undergone a Deloitte Limited Assurance Assessment that evaluated and confirmed different aspects of Incogni’s removal processes.

Incogni has received Editors’ Choice recognition from both PCMag and PCWorld and multiple positive reviews from industry experts.

Along with its excellent Trustpilot rating, reviews praise the provider’s ability to actually reduce spam with minimal user involvement.

Onerep

Onerep provides a clear, visible listing tracking within its supported directories. It allows its users to see exactly which sources were identified and what was removed. 

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However, the company hasn’t published any independent third-party verification comparable to Incogni’s limited assurance assessment.

What’s more, the privacy and security industry has also been influenced by information from Krebs on Security about Onerep’s CEO, who was reported to be creating public people-search sites. It has certainly shaped public discourse on transparency.

While Onerep’s Trustpilot rating is high, it isn’t based on many reviews.

Final Words: Choosing the Right Level of Protection in 2026

Incogni and Onerep were both designed to solve similar digital privacy problems. 

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Onerep is more about removing personal data from publicly visible directory listings, which helps users reduce exposure in search results.

Incogni, on the other hand, is built for broader suppression. It engages both public directories and private data brokers. It also repeats requests on recurring cycles, addressing not only what’s on the surface but also in the behind-the-scenes databases that actually fuel marketing, profiling, and data trading.

As data circulation becomes more complex and concerning in 2026, broker coverage matters more than ever. If your goal is long-term, vast privacy control, Incogni currently offers a more comprehensive solution.

FAQ

How does OneRep protect my real contact info during broker outreach?
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OneRep utilizes dummy email addresses and disposable phone numbers when contacting brokers to ensure your actual information isn’t re-harvested during the opt-out process.

Are there any trust or reliability concerns I should consider?

As of 2026, some users remain cautious of OneRep due to reports regarding the founder’s ties to the data broker industry. Incogni maintains high trust through Deloitte’s independent limited assurance assessment.

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Which platform is more effective for local US search results?

OneRep focuses exclusively on U.S.-based directories and people-search sites, making it highly efficient for domestic results. Incogni covers more brokers globally, but some of those may be less relevant to a US-only audience.

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Ramp buys Stockholm fintech Billhop

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The $32 billion US spend management platform acquires a licensed payments provider to launch corporate cards and finance tools in the UK and EU this summer.


The corporate spend management market just shifted its centre of gravity. On 13 March 2026, Ramp, the New York-based financial operations platform valued at $32 billion, announced the acquisition of Billhop, a Stockholm and London payments firm licensed to operate across the European Economic Area and the UK.

The deal gives Ramp the regulatory infrastructure it needs to onboard European and British businesses directly, something it plans to begin doing this summer.

The timing is not subtle. In January, Capital One announced a $5.15 billion deal to acquire Brex, Ramp’s long-time US rival and once the defining name in startup corporate cards.

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That deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. Ramp’s move into Europe lands while Brex is navigating an acquisition by a traditional bank, and while the question of what happens to Brex’s product roadmap and founder-friendly positioning under Capital One remains unanswered.

The acquisition of Billhop is primarily a licensing and infrastructure play. Billhop, founded in 2012 and headquartered in Stockholm, is a payments infrastructure provider that enables businesses to pay invoices by credit card, even to suppliers that do not ordinarily accept card payments.

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It holds a Swedish Payment Institution licence from Finansinspektionen, Sweden’s financial regulator, and is separately authorised and regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

Those licences give Ramp what it could not quickly build itself: the regulatory standing to process payments across EEA member states and the UK as two distinct jurisdictions.

As part of the acquisition, Ramp will open its first international offices in London and Stockholm. The company currently serves nearly half its customers with some form of international payment capability, it supports transactions in over 180 countries and offers local currency cards in Canada, Australia, Japan, Mexico, and Singapore, but all of those customers are US-headquartered businesses.

The Billhop acquisition makes it possible, for the first time, to sign up companies based in the UK and EU as primary customers.

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“We’ve spent years building Ramp into something the most ambitious US companies rely on. This summer, for the first time, companies headquartered in the UK and EU will be able to use Ramp directly. In their first year, the median Ramp customer saves 5% and grows revenue 16%. Europe is home to extraordinary companies. We can’t wait to get to work.”

That was Eric Glyman, Ramp’s co-founder and CEO, in the company’s announcement.

Niklas Bothén, CEO of Billhop,  who was appointed to the role in a planned leadership transition in late 2024, having joined the company as COO in 2020, framed the deal as a scale-up of Billhop’s core mission.

“Our mission at Billhop has always been to remove friction from B2B payments and make it easier for businesses to manage their spend. Joining Ramp allows us to realise that vision at a much larger scale.”

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Ramp’s broader platform, which combines corporate cards, expense management, vendor payments, procurement, travel booking, and automated bookkeeping, processes over $100 billion in purchases annually and is used by more than 50,000 customers.

The company says its customers have collectively saved over $10 billion and 27.5 million hours since its founding in 2019. It raised a $312 million Series E round in November 2025, which brought its valuation to $32 billion.

The context for all of this is a market in transition. Brex, which was valued at $12.3 billion in 2022, agreed to sell to Capital One for $5.15 billion, less than half its peak valuation, in January 2026.

The markdown reflects a period in which Brex’s core customer base of venture-backed startups sharply reduced spending as funding dried up, while Ramp, with a broader customer mix and a stronger focus on cost savings and efficiency tools, continued to grow.

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Ramp surpassed $1 billion in annualised recurring revenue in October 2025. Brex’s exit leaves Ramp as effectively the dominant independent spend management platform in the US market.

The European market Ramp is entering is materially different from the one it has built its US business on. Corporate card penetration in Europe is lower, B2B payment infrastructure is more fragmented across national markets, and the regulatory requirements for operating as a payment institution vary significantly by jurisdiction.

Billhop’s model, specifically designed to bridge the gap between card-paying buyers and non-card-accepting suppliers across European markets, addresses exactly the structural friction that has historically made it difficult for US-centric spend management platforms to gain traction in the region.

Financial terms of the Billhop acquisition were not disclosed. No acquisition price has been published by either party.

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Running A PC Off AA Cells With Buck Converters Really Boosts Performance

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After the previous attempt of running a PC off AA cells got a lot of comments, [ScuffedBits] decided to do the scientifically responsible thing and re-ran the experiment with all the peer-reviewed commentary in mind. Although we noted with the previous experiment that only alkaline cells were used, [ScuffedBits] rectified this by stating that both carbon and alkaline AA cells were used the first time around.

For this second experiment a number of changes were made, though still both carbon and alkaline cells were put into the mix. To these a third string was added, consisting of NiMH cells, for a total of 64 cells with each of the three strings outputting around 25 VDC when fully charged. These fed a cheap buck regulator module to generate the 12 VDC for the DC-DC converter on the mainboard’s ATX connector.

Although it appears that the same thin Cat-5e-sourced wiring was used, with the higher voltage this meant a lower current, making it significantly less sketchy. Unlike with the first experiment, this time around the Core i3 530 based PC could run much longer and even boot off the DIY battery pack. After a quick game and pushing through a Cinebench run for 64 Watts maximum power usage, it turned out that there was still plenty of time for more fun activities, such as troubleshooting Minecraft and even playing it.

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After a total runtime of 33 minutes and 19 seconds the voltage finally dropped too low to continue. A quick check of cells in each string, it turned out that the carbon cells were the most drained with significant terminal voltage drop. The alkaline cells had been pushed down to a level where they could still probably run a wall clock, but the NiMH cells showed a healthy 1.2 V, meaning that a fully NiMH battery pack could go a lot longer.

This probably isn’t too surprising when we look at the history of battery packs in laptops, where NiCd quickly got pushed out by NiMH-based packs for having significantly higher power density and none of the problems with recharging and disposal. Even today 1.5 V Li-ion-based AA cells do not have significantly more capacity than NiMH AA cells, making this chemistry still very relevant today. Even if you’re not trying to build your own battery pack for running a desktop PC off.

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Adobe CEO to step down after 18 years as investors question the company's next act

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Adobe shares fell about 7% in extended trading after the announcement, leaving the stock down roughly 23% so far this year and near a three-year low.
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Microsoft launches Copilot Health

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Microsoft has launched Copilot Health, a dedicated, secure space within its Copilot AI assistant that aggregates personal health data from wearables, electronic health records, and laboratory results, then applies AI to surface what the company calls a “coherent story” of a user’s health.

The product opened its waitlist on 12 March 2026 and is rolling out in phases, initially to English-speaking adults in the United States.

The launch marks Microsoft’s most direct entry into consumer health AI and places it alongside OpenAI, which introduced ChatGPT Health in January 2026, and Anthropic, which unveiled Claude for Healthcare the same month.

In the words of Dominic King, VP of Health at Microsoft AI: “2026 feels like an important year for consumer health.”

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He told press briefing attendees that Microsoft’s consumer AI products, Copilot and Bing, already field more than 50 million health-related questions a day.

Copilot Health appears as a dedicated tab in the Copilot web interface and mobile app. Users create a health profile by entering basic details such as age and sex, then optionally connect data sources.

From there, the tool can analyse lab results, interpret wearable readings, surface connections across data streams, and help users prepare questions ahead of clinical appointments.

The data plumbing

Three connectors power the platform’s personal health layer. Wearable data, covering activity levels, sleep patterns, and vital signs, flows in from more than 50 devices, with Apple Health, Oura, and Fitbit cited as examples.

Electronic health records come through HealthEx, a US health data infrastructure provider whose network spans more than 52,000 healthcare organisations via direct FHIR-endpoint exchange, as well as TEFCA individual access services across more than 12,000 organisations. Lab results connect through Function, a venture-backed medical testing provider.

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HealthEx confirmed the partnership in a separate press release issued on the same day. The company’s co-founder and CEO, Priyanka Agarwal, M.D., described the integration as giving users access to their health history “across labs, medications, conditions, clinical notes and more” with the ability to revoke access at any time.

Microsoft itself confirmed that users can disconnect any connector instantaneously and that health data in Copilot Health is not used for AI model training, a point the company has repeated prominently in all communications around the product.

For general health information, as opposed to personal data, Microsoft says it has elevated content from credible health organisations across 50 countries, with source selection verified by its clinical team using standards set by the National Academy of Medicine.

Responses include citations and source links. The platform also serves expert-written answer cards from Harvard Health and connects to real-time US provider directories, allowing users to search for clinicians by specialty, location, languages spoken, and insurance coverage.

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The AI roadmap: towards ‘medical superintelligence’

Microsoft is framing Copilot Health as a step toward a longer-term goal it describes as “medical superintelligence”, a term the company has been using since at least late 2025. The vision is AI that can combine the breadth of a general physician with the depth of a specialist.

The vehicle most cited for this ambition is the Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO), a research-stage system the company says has produced strong results in clinical evaluation environments.

Microsoft says forthcoming publications will detail how MAI-DxO can be applied across a wider range of cases and conditions. The company states that any new AI features drawing on these research capabilities will only be released into Copilot Health after rigorous clinical evaluation and with clear labelling, a commitment that reads as a regulatory buffer as much as a product design principle.

“We truly believe we’re on the path to medical superintelligence that brings together both the wide-ranging knowledge of a family doctor or general physician as well as the deep domain expertise of a specialist,” said Dominic King, VP of Health, Microsoft AI.

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Privacy, governance, and the HIPAA question

Microsoft has been careful on data governance. Copilot Health data and conversations are stored separately from general Copilot interactions, encrypted at rest and in transit, subject to stricter access controls, and not used for model training.

The product has achieved ISO/IEC 42001 certification, the international standard for AI management systems, which requires third-party verification of how an organisation builds, governs, and improves its AI services.

The platform has also been developed with an external advisory panel of more than 230 physicians from more than 24 countries, alongside consumer advocacy organisations including AARP, which serves 38 million older Americans, and the National Health Council, which represents over 180 patient advocacy groups.

However, a significant regulatory caveat emerged during press briefings. King confirmed that Copilot Health is not subject to HIPAA, the US federal law governing the privacy and security of patient health data,  because it operates as a direct-to-consumer service where users are sharing their own data, rather than as a covered healthcare entity.

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King said: “HIPAA is not required for a direct-consumer experience like this when you’re using your own data,” while adding that Microsoft intends to announce updates on its HIPAA controls. He declined to specify what those updates would entail.

This distinction matters. HIPAA compliance obligates healthcare organisations to strict data handling, breach notification, and minimum necessary use standards.

Consumer health platforms that fall outside HIPAA, as Copilot Health does at launch, are not subject to the same enforcement regime. The FDA’s relaxation of rules around wearable clinical decision support at the start of 2026 adds further regulatory complexity: it means more AI-enabled health tools can reach consumers without pre-market FDA review.

The clinical reception

Initial expert reaction has been broadly cautious rather than hostile. Arjun Manrai, assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School, told Healthcare Brew that the approach makes strategic sense, describing the use of personal context in AI health interactions as likely to become a defining trend in 2026. He called helping people prepare for doctor’s appointments a good target for large language models.

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Physicians interviewed by the New York Times acknowledged that AI-assisted health tools could help people access health information at a time when care is becoming increasingly expensive and clinicians increasingly stretched.

But the same physicians flagged concerns about privacy risks from sharing records with large technology companies, and the potential for tools like Copilot Health to prompt unnecessary clinical visits by making users anxious about data patterns that may be clinically insignificant.

Microsoft’s standard disclaimer sits at the bottom of every Copilot Health communication: the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent diseases, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice.

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Higher Jet Fuel Prices Could Melt Your Summer Travel Plans

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The price of jet fuel has doubled since the Iran war began two weeks ago, as disruptions in vital shipping lanes limit the global trade of crude and refined oil. The airlines that run on it are racing to keep up. Jet fuel alone accounts for somewhere between 25 and 35 percent of airlines’ costs. The next stop is higher ticket prices.

It’s already happening, to some degree. Several airlines, including Air Asia and Hong Kong Airlines, have explicitly said they’re adding to their usual fuel surcharges. Domestic US ticket prices are up (though they were rising before the war too). “When [the oil price] goes up this rapidly, airfares go up,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told The Wall Street Journal this week. “They also come down, by the way, when fuel goes back down.”

Because no one has a crystal ball, what this all means for travelers is up in the air. Travel and airline industry experts say it’ll take several more weeks of conflict and high fuel prices to really begin reshaping the economics of travel—or to know, even, whether it’s happening. Airlines set initial schedules, routes, and ticket prices months out, which means the money they’re losing today to high costs might only be recouped through ticket sales for flights well into the future.

Here’s what’s likely going on behind the scenes at airlines that will decide whether high fuel prices translate into scrambled travel plans.

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Travel vs. Leisure

For now, airlines are likely tinkering around the edges of operations and ticketing plans, says Ahmed Abdelghany, who studies airline operations as a professor in Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s College of Business. Some of these changes likely won’t be perceptible to the average flier. To make flights more fuel-efficient, for example, and less expensive to operate, airlines have likely already gotten careful about how much fuel is being carried on each flight, he says—less weight, less fuel burned. Upping ticket prices is an easier lift logistically for airlines, but not an automatic move.

“We say the airlines have three devils: volatility in fuel price, volatility in demand, and volatility in weather,” Abdelghany says. “For airlines to raise the fare, it’s not an easy decision, because it’s going to affect demand.”

In fact, many airlines could shield regular vacationers from the brunt of price spikes, initially, because they believe some demand will stick around despite high fares. Since the disruptions that came with the Covid-19 pandemic, several major airlines have rejiggered their business models to focus on business fliers, who tend to be less price-sensitive as they travel on the company dime. “There’s more focus on premium travelers and increased upselling, as opposed to a model that was more domestically focused and had a larger share of business from the main cabin,” says Jarrett Bilous, the managing director for transportation, aerospace, and defense at S&P Global Ratings. Airlines could choose to pass on higher prices to spendier passengers first.

The tickets less affected by price hikes in the shorter term, then, might be the ones more likely to have leisure travelers aboard: trips that start and end on weekends, or last two weeks instead of a handful of days (which reads “business trip”).

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But there’s no guarantee that airlines will stick to that strategy if the high fuel prices drag on, Bilous says. The newer theories about sustainable business traveler demand haven’t been tested during a real financial squeeze. “We really haven’t had either a sustained demand downturn or a price shock in quite some time,” he says.

A New World

If the jet-fuel price shock continues for weeks or even months, bigger changes—and inconveniences—might be headed to an airline near you. Airlines might cut their schedules, targeting less profitable routes to start. (They could also nix flights that pass through the unsettled airspace around the ever-widening conflict.)

During the last major and sustained fuel shock in 2008, airlines charged for checked and eventually carry-on bags. Though the aviation business has changed since then, it’s possible airlines could once again start experimenting with new ways to make extra money off fliers. “New ancillary revenues, fees, charges, maybe lowering the maximum weight of check-in bags—it’s possible,” Abdelghany says. But these sorts of new systems would take a while to implement.

Bilous, the analyst, stopped short of offering ticket-buying advice. “The risk of higher prices has certainly grown versus a few weeks ago,” he says. “Just how much higher, if at all, they go, it remains to be seen.”

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Dyson Airwrap i.d hits Black Friday big saving again

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Ever spent ages trying to curl or smooth your hair only to end up juggling multiple hot tools, wishing one device could dry, style, and shape everything in one go?

Then we can help you out, as the Dyson Airwrap i.d multi-styler and Dryer straight+wavy is now £399, down from its usual £479.99 retail price.

That brings one of Dyson’s most advanced hair styling tools back to a rare Black Friday-level saving during this Amazon Spring Deal Days sale.

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Dyson Airwrap i.d hits Black Friday big saving again

The Dyson Airwrap i.d has scored another hefty Black Friday discount, putting this sought‑after styler firmly back in the spotlight.

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The Dyson Airwrap i.d is designed to replace several separate styling tools, using Dyson’s signature Airwrap technology to style hair while it dries rather than relying on extreme heat.

Instead of clamping or pressing hair between heated plates, the device uses high-velocity airflow to attract and wrap strands around its barrels, which helps shape curls and waves while reducing the heat damage common with traditional styling tools.

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Powered by a 1300W motor, the tool delivers strong airflow that helps dry hair quickly while still giving users control through three speed settings and three heat levels for adjusting the styling process.

That flexibility becomes especially useful for people with longer hair, as the device is specifically designed for chest-length or longer styles and can handle thicker sections without constant repositioning or repeated passes.

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Where the Dyson Airwrap i.d really earns its reputation is in the number of styling options it offers without needing separate appliances scattered across your bathroom counter.

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Included attachments such as the concentrator, diffuser, and brush heads, allow the device to move from rough drying to smoothing or shaping depending on the look you want that day.

The Dyson Airwrap i.d multi-styler and Dryer straight+wavy also makes everyday styling less complicated because switching attachments takes seconds, meaning you can transition from drying to curling without stopping to reach for another tool.

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At £399, the Dyson Airwrap i.d remains a premium styling device, but this discount brings the price closer to what many people would normally spend on several separate hair tools combined.

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Inside LightSpeed Studios’ Bold New Blueprint for Building the Next Generation of Original Games

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At this year’s GDC Festival of Gaming, conversations around the future of game development are back, and amid this conversation is LightSpeed Studios. Remember last year when they first teased their “Original IP Initiative“? The one where they promised to pour serious resources into building new worlds from scratch? Well, they’re back at GDC 2026 with the receipts. They’re pulling back the curtain on a strategic framework for creating original IPs that they’ve been quietly building and pulling together a team around for the past year.

It’s Not Just About Making Games, It’s About Building Worlds That Last

Here’s the thing about the gaming industry right now: everyone’s chasing the next big thing, but most are doing it with their eyes fixed on what’s already working. LightSpeed Studios is taking a different tack. They’ve spent the last twelve months assembling what amounts to a creative dream team and building what they’re calling a “proprietary framework” for developing original IPs.

Translation? There’s a rhyme and reason to how they design games. And it’s centered around a system designed to consistently produce games that don’t just look good but feel like it could be new, or a breath of fresh air.

The Heavy Hitters Have Entered the Chat

If you’re going to bet big on original IP, you bring in the best in the business. Enter Feng Zhu, recently appointed as Creative Director, whose resume reads like a master class in world-building. Known for his design work on shaping major Hollywood franchises, including Star Wars Episode 3, his job at LightSpeed Studios aims to channel all that cinematic storytelling expertise into original games.

In parallel, Kristin Gallagher, Studio Manager of the newly unveiled LightSpeed Mocap LA, a new state-of-the-art motion capture studio, is leading a purpose-built facility engineered for tackling complicated stunt sequences that Gallagher herself describes as among the most complex that she’s encountered in her 20-year career. When someone with that many years of experience is willing to admit this, it’s hard not to pay attention.

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The “90:10” Rule That Changes Everything

Here’s where it gets interesting. During his GDC session “Creating IP Through Understanding,” Zhu dropped some details about the philosophy, which he calls the “90:10 Balance,” that’s driving all of this.

For any given title, 90% of it is rooted in reality. For example, this could include actual locations, historical context, and proportions that make sense in the real world.

The remaining ten percent? Whether it’s cranking up the tension in the narrative of a distinctive storyline, this is where game designers can ink their own personality and break from convention to create a memorable game. It’s like building a home. The foundation and framework are familiar and proven to work. But the interior design is where you make your home your own.

The Production Infrastructure Powering LightSpeed Studio’s Motion Capture

In the spirit of Hollywood and what makes action-packed blockbuster films stand out, this is where motion capture enters the picture. LightSpeed Mocap LA isn’t just any warehouse, as it’s stocked with state-of-the-art Vicon Valkyrie cameras, but what you can’t physically see are the custom APIs developed in-house to handle file management, and tools for streamlining the entire pipeline, which created an environment where complexity isn’t a barrier.

This enables the LightSpeed Mocap LA to dive into complex scenes like capturing a single hero performer, despite being surrounded by thirteen motion capture artists, while keeping every subject perfectly isolated. Or coordinating seven performance capture actors alongside four additional performers, all within a unified pipeline.

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What This Means for LightSpeed Studios’ Future Gamers

So why should you care? Because this framework isn’t just theoretical. It’s already being deployed and set to be deployed on LightSpeed Studios’ future titles. Making pretty games is a baseline, but beyond this, a great game involves building worlds with depth, identity, and a storyline that’s immersive and compelling enough to keep you coming back. When the industry sometimes feels stuck between sequels and reboots of games, it’s refreshing when a studio has a framework set on consistently creating titles that are genuinely new.

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Meta's massive undersea cable project delayed in Persian Gulf as Iran conflict escalates

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Meta’s 2Africa undersea cable project has hit another geopolitical snag, this time in the Persian Gulf. According to Bloomberg, Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), the company responsible for laying parts of the system, has declared force majeure (a contractual clause that excuses a party from liability if an extraordinary, unforeseeable event…
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Apple drops commission rates in China without a fuss

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Apple is dropping its commission rate in the App Store in China to 25% from 30% following discussions with the Chinese regulator, the company said Thursday. The new 25% commission will apply to paid apps and in-app purchases, while a lower 12% commission (down from 15%) will be charged for auto-renewals of in-app purchases after their first year.

The changes go into effect on March 15, 2026, and will not require developers to accept new terms, Apple said.

The decision to adjust commissions without a long, public battle indicates both how important China is to Apple’s market, as well as how Apple sees its App Store’s business value. The company in its first quarter reported soaring iPhone sales in China, with revenue up 16% year-over-year, helping it deliver a record-breaking quarter.

Compared with the EU, where Apple and regulators have been going back and forth on commission changes for years, Apple seemingly dropped its rates in China without pushback. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Apple prevailed in a legal battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games, as a judge decided the iPhone maker was not a monopoly, though developers won the right to route their users to alternative purchase methods (at least for now). As a result, Apple has kept the same rates in the U.S., though it has programs that offer discounted rates for various parties, like small businesses.

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The changes in China are documented in the new version of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

“We are committed to terms that remain fair and transparent to all developers, and to always offering competitive App Store rates to developers distributing apps in China that are no higher than overall rates in other markets,” the company said in its announcement.

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