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Posted on 12/05/2017 8:44:20 PM PST by dayglored
Windows laptops and tablets have traditionally run on X86 processors from the likes of Intel and AMD. Microsoft experimented with using ARM-based processors when it launched the Surface RT and Windows RT in 2012 — and it cost the company dearly. The failure of the Surface RT was mostly due to software, though. The system could only run a small subset of applications that had been specifically compiled for it — and hence you couldn’t just install Chrome or Photoshop, for example. It didn’t help that Microsoft’s marketing for the Surface RT was confusing for many consumers.
Fast-forward to today and Microsoft is ready to give ARM on laptops another try. But this time, you will be able to run any program you wish. Windows 10 for ARM is officially launching today, and while Microsoft itself isn’t launching an ARM-based Surface device just yet, the company has partnered with the likes of HP to launch a new class of laptops that Microsoft officially brands as “Always Connected Devices.”
The promise of using ARM-based chips (and we’re mostly talking Qualcomm Snapdragon processors here), is that you’ll get the kind of user experience that you’ve become accustomed to from your smartphones. That means these devices will turn on almost immediately, feature wireless LTE connectivity and — maybe most importantly — offer the kind of battery life that’ll let you get through a day or two (and, in the future, maybe a week) of work without having to recharge.
(Excerpt) Read more at techcrunch.com ...
The operating system kernel and libraries have been recompiled to run natively on the ARM processor, which means they'll be speedy. The applications, however, are still x86 code, so they get translated from x86 instructions to ARM instructions at the binary layer, on the fly.
For most tasks, this provides reasonable performance; for CPU-intensive tasks it'll be a slowdown. But if these products are successful, the application vendors will recompile for ARM and things will speed up.
In the meantime, these new machines should have awesome battery life, which is their main selling point.
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Surface RT was a failure? Could have fooled me.
My goodness, could they make that start screen look any more Apple-like if they tried, lol? Even ripping off the old smiley-face.
It was successful only in that it successfully demonstrated that calling an operating system "Windows", when it couldn't run 99% of Windows programs, was a bad idea.
Surface RT was released in October 2012 and was discontinued July 2013, only 9 months later, with Microsoft taking a loss of nearly $1B.
It was intended to the "The iPad Killer". Ummm, not so much.
Lesson learned, and Microsoft's later entries into hardware have been more successful.
Umm! Reading this on a Nokia surface running 8.1 rt. Will Microsoft update it to 10? Still having ghost touching problems with this pos. Verizon store was going to give me another one as I could replicate the problem at will. Nokia sold to Microsoft and Microsoft just wouldn’t let Verizon store replace it due to agreement. Sent it in several times and all they did was refresh and sent it back. Ghost touching still an issue.
Bought apple but both windows and ios are junk.
Didn’t realize it flopped that badly. They were all the rage on college campuses for awhile. It’s also possible I’m thinking of the models that came out afterward.
The later models were much more successful, because they were more appropriately designed and marketed. MS took a stumble at first, but they learned from it.
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