Microsoft Brings 1 Trillion Parameters to the Desktop - DTNS 5369

Tom Merritt (0:08)

This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, October 7th, 2026 We tell you what you need to know, give you important context and help each other understand.

Huyen Tue Dao (0:16)

Today, Microsoft and NVIDIA have revolutionized personal computing again.

Tom Merritt (0:22)

Again. At least that's what they say. I'm Tom Merritt.

Huyen Tue Dao (0:27)

I'm Huyen Tue Dao.

Tom Merritt (0:28)

Let's start with what you need to know with the big story.

And of course, because we've got some Microsoft announcements to talk to, we're bringing in our co-host Robb Dunewood to the show. Robb, thanks for joining us today to talk about the Microsoft Surface announcement that didn't look like it was going to be about Microsoft Surface at first. It took them about halfway through the announcement before they got to the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra, which it felt like a build developer conference address up until that. They were they were doing a lot of really developer heavy stuff. But I think I understand why. Let's start with the hardware, though. Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra. We previously did hear teased at build available for preorder today, starting at $2,599. But you can configure this thing to be a lot more expensive and shipping on Friday, October 16th.

The star of the show is it's an Nvidia RTX Spark laptop. So it's got an ARM processor in there, but it's got Nvidia RTX Spark built for developers, built for creators. Although they didn't do a section on gaming because developers and creators play games, I guess. They're going to bring Call of Duty to Spark later this year.

18 millimeters thick, four and a half pounds, 15 inch mini LED touch display, 2.5x the thermal capacity of an existing Surface Laptop. That's probably more of an important spec here when you're talking about the power under this. You can do LPDDR5X memory, 24 gigs, 32 gigs on up to 128 gigs. User serviceable, replaceable, solid state drive. I think when you're talking about people who want to do this kind of thing, that's important.

And I liked this the most I think out of anything. A magnetic connect charging adapter that still uses USB-C. So it's kind of MagSafe, but also standard. So you can plug it in with a regular USB-C power source if you need to. There's also the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, which they have previously announced all the specs about, with a price now, $5,999. Again, you can order it today, ship in October 16th. And then they announced a DGX station for Windows, coming from HP and Dell, called the Super Computer, which is overdoing it. But it can't run trillion parameter models locally. So that trillion parameter model we talked about earlier this week that we said you can't run locally, hey, you can run it on this. Those are coming later this year, though we don't have price or release dates on any of that. Robb, let's start with you. What do you think of this Spark Box in a laptop form factor?

Robb Dunewood (3:09)

I like it. I like it so much that I can't wait to see what Dell comes out with and says XPS 15 on it and has all the same parts on the inside. So I think that this is a really nice box and I was surprised by the price.

I thought it was going to be like $28.99 to $29.99 and the base RAM being 32 gigs. The base is 24, but it's several hundred dollars less expensive than that. So I think you're getting a heck of a lot of laptop. This thing is beefy. It's got a back end on it compared to what laptops are today at four and a half pounds. But it is a powerhouse. You can pretty much do all the things that can be done on a laptop on this laptop.

Tom Merritt (3:52)

I'd almost call it a lug-able at that weight these days, right? Because this is a spark box you can carry around in a bag, I guess.

Huyen, I know you don't do this kind of development necessarily, but from the developer point of view, what does this look like to you?

Huyen Tue Dao (4:10)

I like it a lot. I think lug-able is a very apt description, especially for the price point. So I'm an Android developer, and I know this is shocking to a lot of people still. We tend to use Mac devices just because of the Linux base, so it helps us along.

The benefit of having a MacBook Pro, of course, is that it's lighter and it's powerful, but it's also extremely expensive, in fact, it's getting almost like crazy expensive now. And so the trade-off there, it being more luggable, which is something I used to do actually back when I did use a Microsoft laptop back in the day, it's very familiar. And I do think that there's a really good trade-off here because I worry that some of the more, the kind of professional models that we do use for certain kinds of development are getting prohibitively expensive with Ramageddon. So I like this a lot too, decent price point, especially with more different configurations. And yes, absolutely. I like the MagSafe adjacent charging, which is very important if you're accident prone, raising my hand. And also again, at least some serviceable parts is really, really nice. So yeah, if I could, technically I can use Windows for development. So if I did invest in it, I think this is pretty cool. Yeah.