Didn't laptops with Snapdragon X Elite CPUs have pretty good battery life?

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2375677/surface-laptop-2024-...

X2 Elite shouldn't be that different I think.

Some people even got Nvidia DGX Spark devkits.

They got cancelled after they started shipping, and even people who received the hardware got refunded.

Surface Pro 11 owner here. SQL Server won't install on ARM without hacks. Hyper-V does not support nested virtualization on ARM. Most games are broken with unplayable graphical glitches with Qualcomm video drivers, but fortunately not all. Most Windows recovery tools do not support ARM: no Media Creation Tool, no Installation Assistant, and recovery drives created on x64 machines aren't compatible [EDIT: see reply, I might be mistaken on this]. Creation of a recovery drive for a Snapdragon-based Surface (which you have to do from a working Snapdragon-based Surface) requires typing your serial code into a Microsoft website, then downloading a .zip of drivers that you manually overwrite onto the recovery media that Windows 11 creates for you.

Day-to-day, it's all fine, but I may be returning to x64 next time around. I'm not sure that I'm receiving an offsetting benefit for these downsides. Battery life isn't something that matters for me.

Most apps for dev work actually work; - RStudio - VS Code - WSL2 - Fusion 360 - Docker

Only major exception is: - Android Studio's Emulator (although, the IDE does work)

Have I had any app compatibility issues? To quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: "No."

The Prism binary emulation for x86 apps that don't have an ARM equivalent has been stellar with near-native performance (better than Rosetta in macOS). And I've tried some really obscure stuff!

Ironically, the app I've had the most trouble with is Visual Studio 2022. Since it has a native ARM64 build and installation of the x64 version is blocked, there are a bunch of IDE extensions that are unavailable.

People who have worked on the Windows x64 emulator claim that TSO isn't as much of a deal as claimed, other factors like enhanced hardware flag conversion support and function call optimizations play a significant role too:

http://www.emulators.com/docs/abc_exit_xta.htm

There was a paper with benchmarks posted recently here but I cant find it immediately. I think it was 6-10% from memory.

Unfortunately games are the most common demanding multithread applications. Studios throw a binary over the fence and then get dissolved. Seems to be the way the entire industry operates.

Maybe more ISA diversity will incentivize publishers to improve long-term software support but I have little hope.

This, and always check benchmarks instead of assuming memory bandwidth is the only possible bottleneck. Apple Silicon definitely does not fully use its advertised memory bandwidth when running LLMs.

As I stated this is the top Qualcomm model we're talking about, not the base which is significantly lower.

Given their top model underperforms the most common M4 chip and the M5 is about to be released it's not very impressive at all.

Even the old M2 Max in my early 2023 MacBook Pro has 400GB/s.

Yet the apps top the App Store charts. Considering that these are not upgradable I think the specs are relevant. Just as I thought Apple shipping systems with 8 GB minimums was not good future proofing.

If you look at the verified hardware list for ChromeOS Flex[0], you can get an idea of what ChromeOS devices are being deployed for. Apart from education and companies that use Google Workspace, there's a lot of ChromeOS devices deployed as kiosks and call center computers. This is reflected not only in obscure documentation, but also in the marketing material[1].

The "enterprise" managability and reduced attack surface is driving Google to jack up Chromebook prices. The "Chromebook Plus" models are nearing the same price as a midrange Dell Inspiron, HP OmniBook, or Lenovo IdeaPad. You may have also noticed M4 MacBook Airs can be bought for the price of an iPhone 17, and I suspect that's partially a response from Apple to the Chromebook price increases. Buying a $600 Chromebook might have been sane for someone tired of Microsoft and not interested in a $1000 Macbook Air, but in 2025, with the Macbook Air prices going down significantly[2], Chromebooks are not as appealing to regular consumers (different story for businesses).

[0] https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094?sjid...

[1] https://chromeos.google/business-solutions/use-case/contact-...

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-m4-macbook-air-is-selling-...

For people complaining about battery control and android emulation on linux, ChromeOS is a boon.

You effectively get an actual Linux distro + most of android, with a side of Chrome. It's way closer to "a real computer" than an iPad for instance, and only loses to the Surface Pro/Z13 line in term of versatility IMHO.

It really wasn't bad, my only deal breakers were keyboard remapping being non existent and the bluetooth stack being flaky.

ChromeOS is popular in schools and for extremely locked down, managed corporate devices.

Exactly! That makes this move all the more interesting. The smartphone SoC market is saturated, and margins are shrinking. Laptops/PCs give Qualcomm a chance to leverage its IP in a higher-ASP segment. Expanding is logical, but the competitive bar is way higher.

Also a bunch of Chromebooks with MediaTek chips.

“ARM chip” is a pretty broad umbrella. Apple’s M-series is based on the ARM ISA, the microarchitecture is Apple’s own design, and the SoCs are built with very different cache hierarchies, memory bandwidth, and custom accelerators. I was simply using Apple as an example of another big player.

Still, even if someone uses it for two hours a day and then just closes it being able to run for multiple days without charging the way Macs can is fantastic.

I agree it seems incredibly unlikely that you’re doing multiple days of eight hours of work without charging.

Longer is always better, so if it’s true at all great for them.

Blazingly fast, even

Phoronix!

Today I learned that people are overclocking phone CPUs/SoCs

I trust MS in this. NT has been multi-arch since day one. x86 wasn’t even the original lead architecture.

They also know the score. Intel is not in a good place, and Apple has been showing them up in lower power segments like laptops, which happen to be the #1 non-server segment by far.

They don’t want to risk getting stuck the way Apple did three times (68k, POC, Intel) where someone else was limiting their sales.

So they’re laying groundwork. If it’s a backup plan, they’re ready. If ARM takes off and x86 keeps going well, they’re even better off.

I have a Yoga Slim 7x, which has the ARM. Screen quality is fantastic along with build quality, touchpad and keyboard feel :shrug:

It really depends on what Laptop line you buy. Dells have overwhelmingly become garbage, right next to HP.

Speaker quality on a laptop oth? Couldn't care less, I use headphones/earbuds 99% of the time because If I'm going portable computer, I'm traveling and I don't want to be an inconsiderate arse.

> departments which don't care about screen quality, speaker quality, or much of anything else outside of does the spec sheet on paper match our requirements and is it cheap)

Translation: departments which don't care about worker's wellbeing.

the snapdragon x2 elite extreme (X2E-96-100) SoC supports "128GB+" but qualcomm hasn't specified what the max limit is. this soc also has higher memory bandwidth (228GB/s over 192-bit bus) than the x2 elite.

also see https://wccftech.com/snapdragon-x2-elite-extreme-die-package...

My (admittedly cynical) interpretation is that they are dropping support for desktop Linux completely and shipping Android drivers instead.

That ended 10-20 years ago. The best you can hope for now is vendor-provided drivers.

In some cases the linux devs want to build it for free, but they still need enough information to work with

I have both Ubuntu and Docker Desktop set up in WSL2 on my X Elite laptop, they both work great, no issues (at least none that I have run into).