Asus, HP Debut Snapdragon-Powered Windows Laptops

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This is a pretty big deal. This is the first inroads for ARM into what has for decades been x86 space, and could potentially open it to companies like Apple building their own ARM or other RISC chips for their computers.
 


It all depends on pricing. If people can get an x86 laptop for $300 - 400....why shell out the extra money on a laptop with a Qualcomm processor? They have to be priced to compete.
 
To me if you exclude the high-end ARM CPU these are high-end devices.

1. High Resolution Touch Screen
2. Ultra Thin Laptop / 2-n-1
3. 20+ Hour Battery Life
4. Cellphone Modem
5. Corning Gorilla Glass

If you want an example of poor quality look at the latest HP Envy.

https://techreport.com/news/32920/report-hp-envy-x360-battery-life-drags-regardless-of-cpu-vendor

1. Poor Battery Life
2. Immature firmware and drivers
3. Different Hardware (Display, fit and finish) between AMD and Intel offerings making it impossible to compare.
4. Sub-Par color gamut coverage

5. The list goes on...
 
Can it run x86 and x64 software via emulation? How is the speed compared to i7-8550U say? Reason I choose i7-8550U because to command that price range, it needs to be damn close to the performance of the similarly priced product. Otherwise, why should consumer pay more and limit themselves to small eco system of Arm based software or spent the money to run the software through emulation at a quarter of the speed that they would get from a native x86/x64 software?
 

These ARM devices also run Windows 10 S. As described by Wikipedia...

Windows 10 S is a feature-limited edition of Windows 10 designed primarily for low-end devices in the education market. It has a faster initial setup and login process, and allows devices to be provisioned using a USB drive with the "Set Up School PCs" app. Windows 10 S only allows the installation of software (both Universal Windows Platform and Windows API apps) from Windows Store, although command line programs or shells (even from Windows Store) are not allowed. System settings are locked to only allow Microsoft Edge as the default web browser with Bing as its search engine. The operating system may be upgraded to Windows 10 Pro for a fee, to enable unrestricted software installation. Microsoft also provides means of downgrading back to the S edition. All Windows 10 S devices will include a free one-year subscription to Minecraft: Education Edition. Critics have compared the edition to Windows RT, and have considered it to be a competitor to Chrome OS.
It doesn't entirely sound like an operating system intended for a high-end device. I suppose it could be considered a new version of Windows RT, which is what the original Microsoft Surface devices used, only now with some much needed x86 emulation. The Surface might be considered as being like a high-end netbook or tablet, but compared to a full laptop it could be difficult to consider it high-end.


When this was announced a year ago, Microsoft said that Windows 10 on ARM processors would only be able to emulate 32-bit x86 software, in addition to running Windows 10 apps from the Windows Store. So, apparently 64 bit emulation won't be an option. Most software is still 32-bit though, and aside from applications that benefit from having access to lots of memory, not much tends to be gained from 64-bit versions of software. But there is certainly the question of how well the emulation will perform. In a video, they described the emulation technology as being "magical", which I am interpreting to mean "not very good." : P

 
To be fair, your average Tom's Hardware reader with their i7 CPU's and Discrete Graphics Cards are hardly the targeted audience or market for Windows on ARM.

It looks to me like they are trying to bring a lightweight, always connected, and very long battery life laptop to students and professionals who mostly use browsers and common office apps. Might be especially attractive to folks who, when doing MORE then that, commonly then switch to a VM in the cloud or datacenter.

But yeah, if there are any compromises WITHIN those parameters, then this will likely go the way of Windows RT.
 
These seems to have really good Display and so on. So these Are in same gategory as 1000$ Chromebooks.
Slim and sleek and good build, but not powerfull. Powerfull enough for net surfing though, and to most people that is enough. You can get same speed cheaper, but with worse screens etc.
 


These are far from being "high-end" devices if you actually look at the laptop market. These are nothing but oversized, LTE-enabled tablets with keyboards. Out of the box, you'll have to spend even more money to actually make them functional since Windows 10 S is extremely gimped, much like Windows RT.



You can get a 1080P screen on a $300 Chromebook....
 
Silly unrealisting pricing. They need to be $500 max. Who would be that stupid to buy this low performance laptops at around $1000 plus if you can get 100% Windows compatible laptop with Intel CPUs for the same price and 3pple performance. I like ARM on Windows idea, the whole point of it was very cheap and good enough ARM for browsing net and office stuff. Idiots are going to kill this effort right at the start with overcharging for it.
 
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