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

Microsoft is celebrating a very special birthday, and you're all invited. The Microsoft 50th Anniversary Copilot Event takes place tomorrow, and will see the Seattle tech giant unveil its latest AI developments – and, presumably, look back at its vast history.

In the lead-up to the event at 9:30 AM PT / 12:30 PM ET / 5:30 PM BST on April 4, we'll discuss all of our favorite Microsoft moments from the last 50 years and predict what Copilot upgrades we can expect to see.

Whether you're a fan of Windows, Xbox, Copilot, or even the Zune (remember that?), you won't want to miss this birthday bash.

Plus, we'll have reporters on the ground in Seattle ready to cover all the breaking news as it happens, so stay tuned to TechRadar and bookmark this live blog to keep up with everything Microsoft 50th Anniversary and Copilot.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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."

"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."

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."

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."