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The biggest change is that Voice Clarity will work on PCs without Neural Processing Units.
The feature used to be exclusive to select Surface hardware, but that’s no longer the case.

You’ll no longer need a Surface device, or even a PC with an NPU, to use Voice Clarity on Windows 11.
While AI-powered Voice Clarity is the most notable change, it’s far from the only change.
New Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) features also ship with the build.
Games may not work properly and cause a bug check, also known as the green screen of death.

Voice Clarity used to be limited to a subset of Surface devices, but it is on the way to many more PCs.
Known issues are common in Insider builds, so this isn’t a cause for alarm.
But this particular build is worth skipping if the known issues affect your workflow.
They handle repetitive tasks efficiently and deal with the repetitive nature of AI better than a CPU or GPU.

Plenty of features that utilize artificial intelligence rely on a CPU or GPU.
With that in mind, Microsoft’s latest change to Voice Clarity makes sense.
Up to this point, Voice Clarity has been limited to select Surface devices that had NPUs.

Microsoft announced that will no longer be the case starting with Windows 11 Build 26040.
Voice Clarity works with apps that use Communications Signal Processing Mode, including WhatsApp and Microsoft’s Phone Link.
The feature reduces background noise, cancels echoes, and minimizes reverberation.

Soon, Windows 11 PCs will be able to use Voice Clarity even if they do not have NPUs.
Voice Clarity is a feature that enhances your audio experience on Windows with state-of-the-art AI technology.
No additional hardware is required, as Voice Clarity is supported on x64 and Arm64 CPUs.

While this change does not affect theDISM OS deployment, it may affect some of your workflow.
yo take the time to test these changes on your given scenarios and provide any feedback.
This is the first major version update of the USB4standard and increases performance to 80Gbps from 40Gbps.

It enables the next generation of high-performance displays, storage, and connectivity.
Enhanced image consumption experience in Narrator
We are improving the image consumption experience with Narrator.
Using this feature, IT admins can now configure Windows LAPS to automatically create the managed local account.

Improved integration with existing Microsoft local account management policies has also been added.
The Windows LAPS CSP offers full support for managing these prefs.
Using this feature, IT admins can now configure Windows LAPS to generate less confusing passwords.

For example, the number 1 and the letter I are never used with the new setting.
The Windows LAPS CSP also offers full support for configuring the new PasswordComplexity setting (5).
The Windows LAPS documentation will be updated at a later date with additional information on this new setting.

Using this feature, IT admins can now configure Windows LAPS to generate passphrases, for example: EatsVeganYummyTasty.
All three passphrase word lists are included as part of Windows, so no additional download is required.
A new policy setting PassphraseLength is used to control the number of words in a new passphrase.

The first letter of each word is capitalized for easier readability.
you could download the word lists fromhttps://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2255471.
The three new PasswordComplexity passphrase configs each correspond to one of the original Electronic Fronter Foundation passphrase word lists.

Windows LAPS does not support either customer-configured word lists or customization of the built-in word lists.
The Windows LAPS CSP offers full support for managing these configs.
The Windows LAPS CSP documentation will be updated at a later date to reflect the new configs.

you’re free to learn more about the new Windows LAPS passphrase feature here.
Using this feature, Windows LAPS will now detect when an image rollback has occurred.
The new feature adds an Active Directory attribute msLAPS-CurrentPasswordVersion to the Windows LAPS schema.

To enable this feature, you must first trigger the latest version of the Update-LapsADSchema PowerShell cmdlet.
Windows LAPS will note the presence of the new attribute and start using it.
Note that no policy configs are used to enable or configure this feature.

The feature is always enabled once the new schema attribute has been added.
The Windows LAPS documentation will be updated at a later date with additional information on this new feature.


