Amazon just killed the Fire tablet. Microsoft put an NVIDIA chip in a $2,600 laptop. PC shipments dropped 20% in a single quarter. This week on MSFT UNBOXED POD, Kareem and David go through all of it, plus Google’s Googlebook mess and a Windows search box that finally does something useful.Amazon first. The Fire name is gone after 15 years, and the replacement is a trio of Alexa Tablets running regular Android with the Play Store. Panos Panay told Bloomberg the old ones weren’t giving customers what they asked for, which seems to mean Google apps, nicer hardware, and fewer ads on the lock screen. You pay for that, though: $229 to start, $499 for the 12 Pro, versus $155 for the Fire HD 10 it’s replacing. Amazon is betting people will pay more for Alexa+.The Surface Laptop Ultra is Microsoft’s answer to the MacBook Pro. It starts at $2,599, runs on NVIDIA’s RTX Spark chip, and tops out at 128GB of unified memory, enough to run models up to 120 billion parameters without touching the cloud. It’s Windows on Arm, so whether your apps and games survive the trip is a fair question. Pre-orders are live, and it ships October 16.Googlebook versus Chromebook Plus is where David and Kareem spend a good chunk of the episode, mostly because Google has now got three laptop tiers and a name that gets mangled into “Google Books” half the time. Googlebook starts at $899, blends Android and ChromeOS, and wires Gemini deeper into the OS. Chromebook Plus is cheaper and already has plenty of the same AI stuff. Who the new one is for isn’t obvious.IDC’s Q3 numbers are ugly. 62.7 million PCs shipped, down 20.1% from last year, and HP fell almost 31%. Part of it is buyers and vendors stocking up early in the year ahead of memory price hikes, and part is that memory is just expensive now. IDC thinks Q4 looks about the same, and don’t count on bargains coming back.Also, Windows Insiders on the Experimental channel can try the rebuilt taskbar search: faster, less cluttered, and it’ll toggle dark mode or Bluetooth, mute your PC, or snap windows when you ask. English only for now, and the Start menu version waits until next year.Buying anything on this list? Drop it in the comments.#MSFTUnboxedPod #TechNews #Amazon #AlexaTablet #SurfaceLaptopUltra #NVIDIA #RTXSpark #Googlebook #Chromebook #Windows11 #PCMarket #TechPodcast