Microsoft 50th Anniversary Copilot Event live – our favorite Windows, Surface and Xbox memories and what we expect to see

Now, let's go back down memory lane, as Marcus Mears II – TechRadar's Computing Reviews and Buying Guides Editor – looks back on the Xbox 360.

The One Thing No Xbox Owner Wanted to See

It's not too often we get omens in the world of tech and gaming (well, not counting HP). But there's one symbol synonymous with the Xbox 360 - and its creator, Microsoft - that certainly fits the bill. The infamous "Red Ring of Death" would rear its ugly head to tell you "this Xbox's time is up. Repair or replace, but go no further!"

A number of flashing red lights would appear around your 360's power button, alerting you of one or more critical hardware errors going on under the hood. But did you know that depending on how many lights were shown, and in what positions they populated, your Xbox was giving different and specific cries for help?

If you saw one red light in the bottom right of the ring, you were looking at some form of acute hardware failure, and typically it was followed up with an error code on your display. If two red lights appeared, your Xbox was overheating and needed some time to cool off.

Three red lights was the unfortunate star of the show, the Red Ring of Death, and it meant your Xbox 360 had critical hardware errors preventing it from running normally. Your display wouldn't show an error code, and you were left clutching your console in your hands, thinking back on all the good times you had together (or more likely using some choice words while trying to get it to work again).

After several years of Microsoft-fueled fun, my own 360 went the way of the Red Ring. Getting rid of your favorite tech is never fun, but thinking back on it certainly can be. 50 years in the game is a long time, and there's bound to be ups as well as downs. Leave it to Microsoft to make the downsides an iconic walk down memory lane.

Back to the Copilot event. It's hard to know exactly what Microsoft has up its sleeve for tomorrow's livestream, but you'd hope it's something important considering it's linked to the company's golden anniversary.

Eric Hal Schwartz wrote about the 4 things he wants to see announced at the Copilot event, and I'm in agreement with some of his ideas.

My favorite concept in his list is the return of Clippy, Microsoft's most famous mascot. Could you imagine a Copilot-powered Clippy in Windows 11? Sign me up!

Hello, I'm a PC

Graham Barlow, TechRadar's AI Editor has chimed in with his thoughts on Microsoft's 50th anniversary.

"With Microsoft hitting its 50th anniversary I’m reminded of the old rivalry between PC and Mac.

Back in the early 2000s, I was the editor of MacFormat, the UK’s no.1 Apple magazine, and Microsoft was our sworn enemy. It was just a few years later (2008) that Apple created the “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” advertising campaign featuring John Hodgman and Justin Long.

I used to love those adverts and I remember recreating the look and feel of them with the editor of PC Answers at the time, Simon Pickstock, for a magazine feature. We had some fun with that. Of course, I played the Justin Long character and Simon played the John Hodgman character. I made fun of Windows’ inability to survive for five minutes on the Internet without getting some sort of malware infestation and he laughed at the Mac’s inability to get a DIY memory upgrade.

The two iconic characters exemplified everything about Mac and PC owners of the time, and in a way, it’s still true today. Windows and Microsoft have never been ‘cool’ like the Mac has, but it’s a testament to Windows’ enduring popularity that it’s still here today, and still the only real choice for a PC operating system. (Yes, I’ve heard of Linux, thank you).

Of course, the joke was on me when a few years later I was asked to also run Windows Help & Advice magazine in addition to my duties on MacFormat, in a way that made it pretty clear that “no” was not going to be an option. Windows Help & Advice didn’t survive COVID-19 sadly, but at least that meant I got a break from running “How to reinstall Windows” cover features every other month (yes, they were that popular).

Interestingly, MacFormat is still going strong, and it’s one of the few technology magazines that continues to still exist in print.

While the Windows magazine readers may have all migrated online and now exist in the cloud somewhere, it turns out that they were the ones who were more interested in living in a digital world than the Mac owners. Back in 2008, who would have thought that?"

I'm loving all these Microsoft memories, and it's great to learn more about my colleagues' careers. Keep em' coming folks!

TechRadar's very own Editor At Large, Lance Ulanoff, is in Seattle for the Microsoft event, and he's written an excellent piece on how Gates and co have helped define the tech industry.

Lance has been covering Microsoft since the 1980s, so he's got a wealth of experience and knowledge to share on the evolution of the company throughout the decades.

In his latest article, "I've been covering Microsoft, DOS, and Windows since the 1980s, and Microsoft turning 50 is more important than you think", Lance discusses the company's impact on the industry and the ups and downs of the tech giant over the years.

Here's one of my favorite quotes from the piece:

"I booted up the computer and started playing around in what was then Windows 2.0. It had mouse support and windows, but seemed rigid, and as soon as I discovered there was no font support – a key component for digital publishing. I was out.

What I didn't realize at the time was how our destinies – Microsoft's and mine – would soon be intertwined."

This is an awesome article, go and give it a read!

I remember those Xbox 360 days too Axel... What a time to be alive, coming home from school and jumping on Xbox live to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

I have especially fond memories of the 360 era of video games because of my prowess at wrestling games. My claim to fame is my worldwide ranking in WWE Smackdown! vs. Raw 2007 where I was 11th in the world for steel cage matches.

Nowadays I'm lucky if I can win a game in any online lobby, kid these days are just built different!

The good ol' days

Let's jump to another TechRadar team member's favorite Microsoft memory. This time in the company's gaming division.

Axel Metz, TR's Phones Editor, says "I'm jumping in to nostalgia dump about my beloved Xbox 360.

This picture, taken in November 2013, is the first in my iPhone’s camera roll and shows my modest collection of Xbox games just moments before they were moved onto another shelf to make way for my shiny new PS4 collection.

I happily played those PS4 games for most of the next decade, but my fondest gaming memories relate to my Xbox 360 and the hundreds of hours I spent playing the likes of Halo: Reach, Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, Skate 3, Batman: Arkham City, Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 3, Just Cause 2, FIFA 13… the list goes on.

The 360 console design was perfect; the controller was perfect; the dashboard was perfect; party chat was perfect – looking back, I can’t believe just how badly Microsoft dropped the ball with the Xbox One (even I, an Xbox lover, was forced to defect to PlayStation), but lest we forget just how much its game-changing 2005 console meant (and still means) to millions of people.

I don't think Copilot gets the love it deserves, and my colleague Eric thinks the same.

Earlier this week he wrote about the Copilot app and why you should give it a try.

Read his piece, "I tried Microsoft Copilot's iOS app, and here are 3 reasons why you should too" and maybe you'll be convinced to give Microsoft AI a go.

What about the future?

While it's lovely to talk about the past, what about the future?

The event tomorrow is focused around Copilot, but what could we see Microsoft unveil when it comes to AI?

This week, the company has rolled out Copilot Search in Bing, and it's available for free. Could that be at the core of the event? I'm not convinced

Hanson adds, "This was back in 2008, and Microsoft had licensed Future to create a magazine to show off its new operating system and help users get the most out of their PCs.

While it was the official magazine, Microsoft was thankfully quite hands-off for the most part, and the magazine was far more than just an advert for Windows Vista. Magazines were still selling well and we had a big team, and we did some really fun features such as renting out cars and using various map websites and SatNavs (remember them?) to see who could get to a random place as fast as possible.

It was genuinely fun, and here I am almost 20 years later still at Future and still writing about PCs.

The only issue was that Windows Vista was a bit, well… crap. I moved publications after a few years, writing for esteemed organs such as PC Plus, PC Format and Linux Format, to name a few. I was also involved in the launch of Windows 8: The Official Magazine, which again was a fun publication, though it had to deal with the fact that Microsoft had somehow made an operating system worse than Windows Vista.

But I’ll always have a soft spot for those less popular versions, as they helped get me to where I am today."

I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Microsoft (kind of)

Microsoft's impact can't be overestimated, it has truly defined the tech industry, and in turn everyone at TechRadar's careers, in some shape or another.

Computing Managing Editor, Matt Hanson owes a lot of his career to Microsoft, He said "In a way, I owe a lot of my career as a tech journalist to Microsoft, and if it wasn’t for the company - and a rather unpopular version of Windows - I wouldn’t be here typing away about PCs.

Not because I wouldn’t exist at all - thankfully Microsoft had nothing to do with my actual creation, that would be one heck of a family tree to get my head around, but because the very first publication I worked for at Future Publishing was Windows Vista: The Official Magazine."

"Back in the day, we had bootlegged pirated copies of Microsoft Windows 95 Beta (AKA Chicago), and I vividly remember the hours I spent trying to install it from a CDROM.

Ironically, 30 years later, AI has brought back that same feeling. Gemini, the AI I used the most, is in dark mode by default and text mostly, not unlike the OS of yesteryear. P.S.: if you want to relive Windows 95 in all its glory, have a gander at this site that puts Windows 95 in your browser."

My favorite Microsoft product: Windows 95

Desire said, "Launched almost 30 years ago, Windows 95 remains my favorite Microsoft product of all time. Those of a certain vintage will remember the days of MS-DOS and the joys of text-based operating systems.

The transition from c:\ to GUI (graphics user interface) was a true paradigm shift, opening the world of computing to a much, much wider audience and cementing its status back then as the OS powering the personal computer revolution.

The cursor changed everything, but it's something else, an afterthought, that truly changed the world: Internet Explorer."

Let's start bringing in some of TechRadar's staff to discuss their favorite Microsoft memories, starting with TechRadar Pro's Managing Editor, Desire Athow.

His favorite Microsoft product of all time is Windows 95, and for many that might be the very first experience you ever had with a computer.

Microsoft's first logo

In November 1967, Micro-Soft was registered as a trade name and we got our first glimpse at a Microsoft logo.

It's definitely not as iconic as the colorful Windows logo we've all grown to know and love, but back in the 60s logos were more about practicality than style.

Let's kickstart this time capsule 50 years ago, back in 1975.

It's generally considered that Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, but Bill Gates and Paul Allen's journey started in January of that year when the duo spotted the MITS Altair 8800 on the cover of Popular Electronics.

With their creative juices flowing, the duo launched BASIC in February 1975 as the first computer programming language for a PC and sold it to MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The pair then moved to Boston where Microsoft was co-founded as BASIC. By July 1975, BASIC v2 had officially shipped, and the journey had begun.

In the lead up to the event, we've asked the TechRadar team to discuss their favorite Microsoft memories from over the years.

Whether that's the launch of Windows 95, Microsoft's venture into games consoles in the early 2000s, or Windows Phone, we've got so much to reminisce about.

Let's go over the basics first:

The Microsoft 50th Anniversary Copilot Event will be live-streamed on the company's website on April 4 at 9:30 AM PT / 12:30 PM ET / 5:30 PM BST.

We expect to see announcements related to Microsoft AI, but details are pretty scarce at the moment.

Good morning! John-Anthony Disotto, TechRadar's Senior AI Writer here, ready to kickstart our coverage of the Microsoft 50th Anniversary Copilot event!

Stay tuned – because we've got a while until the event starts tomorrow (April 4), so we'll have plenty time to talk about the best (and worst) Microsoft moments from the last half century.

And of course, we'll also be speculating as to what we expect to see from Copilot, and bringing you any last-minute rumors on that front.