Windows on ARM laptops

Tech, TV, Mobile, Internet and Geek Corner
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Went yesterday to buy a laptop to a brick and mortar shop. I saw on the website that it said 1 laptop available which means…only the laptop on display is available.

The Asus Zenbook A14 weighs 1 kilo, screen with enough pixels and has 20+ hours of battery life. There’s only 1 incertitude. The CPU is not AMD or Intel, it’s an ARM architecture based one: the Snapdragon X.

Read a bit, watched some online reviews (this was hard, annoying high pitched voices). The assessment so far:

I guess the only worry is that if they don’t become more popular over time, Microsoft stops supporting Windows on ARM at some point. Not a dealbreaker, but I just verified the order date (at Galaxus) of the Asus Zenbook that is going to be replaced: 06.06.2016. Great, laptops last 10 years :partying_face:

I guess I’ll go ahead with the buy and use it as a excuse to visit the digitec shop in Wohlen. I will tell in some week and months how it went.

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I remember buying an Asus (white Lamborghini VX7) years ago. One of the best computers I ever had (to work).
“computers last 10 years’… riiiigggghhhtt. That’s why I had to call HP four times already with hardware issues after 2 years …and that’s why HP is calling me monthly, telling me " hey, your computer is probably obsolete by now, look at our new models”…)

3

I like to with computers and phones. Changing batteries is the most common job. But sometimes, other stuff breaks.

I once replaced the CPU fan in an HP folio 13 which lasted me 13 years (after 2 battery replacements). I had to stop using this laptop last year because the screen was starting to fail (low red color). As substitute I got a used DELL sold by my employer. I will replace the battery on this one once it becomes annoying, but not yet.

This new computer for wifey is because the chassis of the old zenbook broke. The computer still works fine, but it’s literally breaking apart. It doesn’t give confidence that it will be reliable for more than a few days.

4

Still have and use my 2011 mac mini as my day to day jalopy.
Eat your hearts out win-boys.

5

My PC was bought back in 2018 and still running fine. :crossed_fingers: it continues to do so for many more years.

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Yes and No, I’d avoid the “X Plus” version unless you really need only a typing and video watching machine (snapdragons are really power efficient for 4k playback, not sure about encoding or editing, most likely are mediocre). The Elite version is better, but still locked to Windows. Qualcomm announced working on a next gen X2 of the ARM processors which would be fully supported by Linux.

Microsoft rather won’t abandon the current snapdragon X Plus/Elite chips, but it won’t care about them either, much like about the older snapdragon QC2 used in older Surface Pro X tablets, which still work but are ridiculously slow (they got update to windows 11 via recovery)

I believe the version X2 will totally eliminate Intel/AMD processors from consumer laptops, so in the next 5 years ARM binaries will be the norm, x86 a legacy second-class support

7

I wouldn’t bother with an ARM laptop now. Maybe in the future if it becomes more widely adopted. The only exception is if you only run a very narrow set of apps and all of these already work flawlessly on ARM.

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All x86 applications work flawlessly on ARM. The only issue is with any drivers. If the application needs to install some driver it must be native. Indeed this might backfire with some anti-piracy protected apps which use drivers to enforce the protection. I haven’t seen such for quite a while, most apps enforce protection by online activation which has to be periodically refreshed or even require everyday network connection to always validate your license.

Microsoft is shipping x86 programs with ARM laptops, they didn’t even bother to recompile everything as there’s no practical difference.

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I’m guessing by ‘All x86 Applications’ you mean ‘some windows x86 applications’ and ignore any other operating systems.

I run a few servers on ARM and have bumped into issues such as certain python wheels not having ARM versions.

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I use python x86_64 everywhere, do you know that you can run it on ARM linux?

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Ordered the laptop via Galaxus.

Tangential story. I got curious and selected “pick up from Wohlen shop” since I’m close to it. It was an interesting trip. I now understand why Galaxus has 10 shops where people can pick up their stuff: it’s the cash economy. Everyone who does not have or doesn’t want to use a credit card or twint, places an order, shows ups there with a bar code, and puts all the cash in the counter. TBH, I have not seen so many 200 and 500 CHF bills together since long ago.

Asus says 990 grams, I assume my cheap kitchen balance is not that precise.

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So, it delivered it’s main feature, the low weight. Everything else is a compromise with an ARM CPU :slight_smile:

  • Printer: I followed the instructions from Brother. Do not install Brother printer/scanner dedicated software, use the driver that comes with Windows 11. It worked, it prints and scans.
  • Software: I have found that there’s plenty of software compiled for ARM. Firefox, Handbrake (video editing), MS Office. Audacity (audio editing) has no native ARM version so it will be emulated, let’s see how it works.

It takes some time to set up the new computer. Windows 11 took one evening to download all “important” updates. It took me another evening to get rid of the bloatware (the important updates from previous evening), a 2nd evening to get rid of local MS Copilot, and a 3rd evening to remove Asus bloatware.

While doing this, I realized the little computer is really reactive, I type and it reacts. There’s nothing that bothers me more than typing and not seeing the characters on the screen immediately. I’m a bit surprised because I work on a company HP with an Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 Processor 165H, 32 GB RAM and allegedly fast SSD, anyway sometimes it’s not pleasant to type on it. Maybe it’s not hardware related, it’s bloatware and spyware from my employer.

Can’t tell about Python because it’s wife’s computer. I’m developing a little piece of software for her in python, but it will be a self-contained exe. It will be probably emulated in ARM, but CPU performance is not critical. It’s a chore saving piece of software, so even if it’s slow, it saves the clicking and typing.

So far, Windows on ARM has been working great. Next test: when wife starts taking it to work, using it on the train, let’s see if it delivers on the battery life offer. Manufacturer says ~30 hours, youtubers say ~20 hours. If there’s not need for the charger during the day, that’s another 200 grams less of weight to carry around.

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12

I always create the clean latest iso from Microsoft to install it, to remove bloatware as it’s not only about removing binaries, you’d also need to restore many registry keys…

My Lenovo with Ryzen AI 340 works full day without charging for “typewriting” tasks, these days ~16h of battery life on lite-workload is not a challenge

most likely this, but also could be the hardware, sometimes the internal keyboard is stupidly wired up ending as some low priority device (as seen by OS), gaming reviews often gives you DPC latency benchmark which typically affect graphics, but can also introduce input lag, depends what drivers are used for the input devices

PS. you put it off center, the reading is invalid :face_with_tongue:

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I’m not at that level of cleanliness haha. Getting rid of useless stuff that triggers auto-updates is enough.

Really? This sucks. Since I’ve used computers, there’s no perceptible lag between keyboard and screen unless something’s really wrong. But…work computer is plugged to a docking station and the keyboard is plugged to this docking station. Could it be this? Life’s to short to find out…easier to complain about work laptop haha.

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the problem is not because corporate buy sh* security products (sometimes they do) but because they buy and install a lot, each adding some latency, 10-30ms, but it’s not that it just sums up, when the products are interfering with each other the latency jumps to 100-300ms, that’s extreme case but you’ll visually see how the letters appear with significant delay on the screen