PCWorld June 2025

As the Trump administration’s trade war oscillates, tech manufacturers are trying to deal with the unpredictable nature of an economy held hostage to a single man’s whims. But smaller, more niche businesses simply can’t deal with the uncertainty of prices that might double tomorrow—so they’re out, at least as far as shipping to customers in the U.S goes. The latest example is Keyboardio, a custom keyboard shop run by two people in California. Keyboardio specializes in the kind of gorgeous, wood-cased ergonomic designs that always draw crowds at keyboard meetups. But because essential parts like PCBs come from China, even if their wooden cases are sourced from American wood, both the standard tariffs and the crackdowns on de minimis shipping exceptions make it impossible to remain profitable for U.S. sales, as…

Smaller Surfaces have finally arrived. Microsoft is announcing smaller, less powerful revisions of the Microsoft Surface Pro tablet and Surface Laptop, all built around a more conservative version of Qualcomm’s battery-sipping Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip. Smaller doesn’t necessarily mean dramatically cheaper, however. And while earlier reports said Microsoft would ship both devices with 12-inch screens, that’s not quite what we’re getting. The new $899 13-inch Surface Laptop is very similar to the existing 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7, which actually ships for as low as $999.99 with a Snapdragon X Plus chip inside. Meanwhile, the smaller 12-inch Surface Pro will cost as little as $799.99, below the $999.99 Microsoft charges for its existing 13-inch Surface Pro 11 with a Snapdragon X Plus inside. As you’ll see below, you’re getting a lot less.…

Microsoft has a branding revolution sitting in its back pocket, and I don’t think the company realizes it. When Microsoft previewed its upcoming Windows AI experiences alongside a smaller Surface Laptop and Surface Pro (see page 10), it did so by showing off what it presented to the public: a collection of experiences that could take advantage of the NPU within Copilot+ PCs. One of the most important experiences is the agentic AI that’s coming to the Windows 11 Settings menu. Agentic AI will allow Windows to basically research, troubleshoot, and solve your PC problems for you. If your screen is too dim, Windows will show you how to adjust the brightness. If the font is too small, Windows will show you how to enlarge it. More importantly, Microsoft says that…

Google has a monopoly, and that’s the official line of the US federal government. In fact, it has two of them, losing two separate antitrust cases that threaten to cripple the tech giant. The Department of Justice has proposed forcing Google to sell or otherwise divest itself of the Chrome browser as the first and preferred remedy. But who would buy it? Unsurprisingly, there are beaucoup business beaus lining up around the block for this browser bachelorette. We’ve already heard that ChatGPT maker OpenAI is very interested, as testified in court by an executive. And another notable name in the AI space, search engine Perplexity, told a judge much the same thing. Bloomberg reports that Yahoo, which almost feels like legacy media at this point, would also be interested if Chrome…

Microsoft’s controversial Windows Recall has now been generally released, and it poses as much of a risk to your privacy as it could be a boon to your productivity. Recall is just one of several new features that either have arrived or will be arriving on Copilot+ PC, Microsoft said in late April. Recall, Windows’ improved semantic search, Live Captions, Cocreator, and Restyle Image and Image Creator within Photos are now all available for Copilot+ PCs that include Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs as well as PCs with qualifying processors from AMD and Intel. A few features—Click to Do, Live Captions, and Voice Access—are available for Copilot+ PCs running on Snapdragon, but support for AMD and Intel chips isn’t quite available. For Microsoft, the release of these AI-powered features is cause for…

Google said Thursday that it has begun migrating its “AI Mode” out of its experimental Labs effort and into the real world. Google said that a “small percentage of people” in the “coming weeks” will see what Google calls AI Mode, or entirely AI-generated responses to queries users ask. It’s Google’s response to services like Anthropic, which “answer” queries using AI, slurping up and regurgitating answers that others have already provided. Google first began revamping its search algorithm in 2023, when it started aggregating AI-powered summaries of, say, the best laptops. AI has been used elsewhere by Google services like Chrome to sum up web pages as well. (The Department of Justice is attempting to break up Google, including spinoff its Chrome browser [see page 17], as punishment for forming what…