Windows 10 On ARM, Again; Can Qualcomm Make It Stick?

[scolaner]

Windows 10 laptops built on ARM chips are nigh; Asus, HP, and Lenovo have all pledged to build notebooks based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC. But we've heard all this before, haven't we?

Windows 10 On ARM, Again; Can Qualcomm Make It Stick? : Read more

 

[HavocX]

"There are some tricks, such as the fact that Office is getting recompiled for ARM--”Win32 Office,” you could call it--and all the compiling instructions are cached. However, apps are one thing; dealing with the OS is quite another, and that’s where performance penalties would have the most impact."

As your own "how it will actually work" link explains, the OS will not be emulated but run natively on ARM. The same is true for (none Desktop Bridge) UWP apps.

There is a whole class of Cherry Trail based windows devices in the below $500 price range waiting for a new chip. New models are still released with that old silicon, but the Snapdragon 835 will revitalize the segment with better performance and updated functionality.

"It’s worth wondering whether or not this kind of always on-ness is a feature that users actually want. Given security and privacy concerns, it may not be for many."

Like no-one want their phones to be always on and always connected? This is exactly the same connectivity that every other Snapdragon 835 device uses. And you know, it is possible to turn it off!

 

[JonDol]

I, for one, don't buy the argument 'slow to turn on and off' on the marketing slide. I got a modern PC, passively cooled and once all the diagnostic and telemetry stuff is disabled (guides are abundent on the net) it starts from power off in seconds: it even starts before the monitor ! I also have similar results with older hardware: 8 and 4 years old laptops start from power off in less than 20 seconds, 13 years old Win Xp PC starts in 15 seconds (if I don't count the 20 seconds it wastes in BIOS). All these machines boot from SSD.

 

[kenjitamura]

All these machines boot from SSD.

SSD's really are the best dam* product to come out of personal computer space in the past decade. They beautifully kill half of the talking points that PC hardware manufacturers keep trying to cram down our throats as reasons to look for new hardware. If it feels slow people are going to run out and get more ram, the next cpu iteration, anything new they can get their hands on and with an SSD most things just don't feel slow anymore.

 

[mitch074]

A couple years ago, a friend of mine had an older dual core, 4Gb RAM, Win7 32-bit laptop that he didn't use anymore. He wanted to get a new one for his wife who wasn't into gaming, but he was running low on cash. We picked up an extra stick of RAM, a SSD, a brand new battery and a Windows 10 ISO.
It took a couple hours, but that old thing was running great afterwards and is still going strong now. Actually, I think performance for laptop has plateaued a few years ago, with current laptops being no more powerful than older ones but they sure heat up less and are quite a bit smaller.