Microsoft launches the College Offer, bundling free Microsoft 365 Premium and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with discounted Windows 11 PCs from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo for US students. The move responds directly to Apple's $599 MacBook Neo and its student pricing, escalating competition in the budget laptop market.

Tap a lens to see what this story means for you.
Liked this? The Brief brings you the whole day in tech, verified, every morning.
Two minutes, free forever. What's in The Brief →
See what’s happening right now
The Feed runs all day — short, verified briefs the moment they break.
Open the FeedFollow @thecircuitry_
Every story we publish, as it happens. No noise between.
Reader-supported
The Circuitry is a passion project I've always wanted to build, and I love the work behind it.
Running it costs real money. APIs, hosting, time. To keep improving the site and growing this into something useful for everyone, those costs have to be covered.
Any contribution is appreciated. If not, no pressure. Thanks for reading.
At its Windows and Surface event, Microsoft opened preorders for the $2,599 Surface Laptop Ultra and the $5,999 Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, and said Copilot will be able to use files and act across Windows in the coming months.
NVIDIA and Microsoft opened RTX Spark preorders and made Microsoft Execution Containers generally available at the Windows AI and Surface event, aimed at running AI agents on Windows PCs. RTX Spark laptops, first introduced in June, are on preorder today with up to 128 GB unified memory and one petaflop of AI compute, shipping October 16.
Microsoft says Copilot on Copilot+ PCs will be able to use files and recent activity on your PC, take actions across Windows, and tap local AI models, with your permission. The features are expected to start rolling out in the coming months.
Microsoft will turn the Windows Task Bar search menu into a chatbot interface this fall that handles thousands of actions through typed commands. The redesign lets users control settings, access Copilot and send messages without separate apps.
Microsoft Dataverse is affected by critical vulnerability CVE-2026-88131, which allows remote code execution. The flaw scores 9.8 on CVSS; Microsoft says it has already fully mitigated it and customers have nothing to patch.