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Microsoft Hardware

Microsoft Launches Arm-Powered Surface Laptop (theverge.com) 28

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
Microsoft today launched its new Surface Laptop, featuring Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite or Plus chips, aiming to compete with Apple's powerful and efficient MacBook laptops. The Surface Laptop, available for preorder starting at $999.99, boasts up to 22 hours of battery life, a haptic touchpad, and support for three external 4K monitors. Microsoft claims the device is 80% faster than its predecessor and comes with AI features powered by its Copilot technology.
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Microsoft Launches Arm-Powered Surface Laptop More

Microsoft Launches Arm-Powered Surface Laptop

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  • It's a nice size, but the Intel based ones just don't have the power/battery life to be useful.

  • again ? (Score:3, Informative)

    by weirdow ( 9298 ) on Monday May 20, 2024 @02:41PM (#64485975) Homepage
    the surface RT was already arm powered.

    • I think because they didn't consider that to be a laptop, but just a tablet with a detachable keyboard.

    • Well, this time it won't be running Windows 8.

    • 'powered' is a generous statement here. Surface RT's CPU is pretty poor, and since most software on windows needs emulated that makes the RT either incapable of running it or runs it incredibly slow.

  • Microsoft just killed x86 on the laptop and tablet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Monday May 20, 2024 @02:54PM (#64486019)
    If you look at all the press releases from the event, nearly every OEM is announcing "Co-Pilot plus" pcs with ARM chips and Prism Emulator. They also announced a whole raft of apps that run ARM natively. x86 only makes sense on desktop pcs now, which outside the gaming market has mostly declined to business use only. I wouldn't be surprised if ARM desktop boards get announced soon with GPU compatibility, although gaming "anti-cheat" might be triggered by running in emulation. If I were Intel, I'd seriously be shitting bricks right now. Intel already got wounded in the past with the failure of Itanium, i860 and ipx432, hanging on to x86 while the vast majority of devices are now ARM and most assembly programmers trained on it will hurt it in the long run. Intel should be bold and announce the "Core ARM" processor.

    • I already have an NPU in the form of a Geforce RTX 4070 Ti that does 600+ AI TOPS yet Microsoft wants me to buy a newer, inferior computer, with a slower AI NPU and no discrete GPU support so that I can get "Copilot+". No thanks, I'll just move to Linux.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by batkiwi ( 137781 )

        If you have no interest in copilot+ how does this effect you?

        Linux also doesn't have copilot+

        • If they're aware of how many "AI TOPS" their GPU puts out, it's very likely that they are interested in "AI" funcitonality. They also never stated they're not interested in Copilot+.

          Also, the word you're looking for is "affect".

    • Uh, no .. they should go all in on RISC V.

    • For general workloads AMD is already not that far behind last gen ARM (Snapdragon 8xxxxxx) in efficiency and Intel looks to be more and more competitive in Meteor Lake and upcoming releases - we're approaching a point where even Intel based devices have battery life governed more by power sucking OLED screens than the power used by the CPU, at least in a largely-idle office work scenario. Hell, even a less efficient SSD can drop your battery life by 20% these days - that's how efficient x86 already is. Of c

  • That's exactly the same as the MacBook Pro! Talk about copying. Since we're in the zone of contrivance they should have made it 24 hours and made a big deal about being the first laptop to "break the 24 hour barrier."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      What is the bet that 24 hours was the design requirement, but in the end (software feature creep?) it failed to reach that in even the most contrived tests, and it was too late to increase the battery size?

  • The x86 architecture is crippled because of backward compatibility, stretching back to the 8008 or 4004
    Intel and Microsoft are successful because they have supported backward compatibility over the years
    I have no doubt that ARM is a better design
    But, there is a big problem. Thousands of programs were written for x86
    Some will never be rebuilt for ARM because they are obsolete or abandoned or their developers are long gone
    Backward compatibility is still really, REALLY important

  • Apple basically pushed developers to re-compile for arm and they did a ton of work on rosette2 to make intel compiled software tollerable.

    Microsoft basically hasn't done either. they have the emulation but it's pretty slow.

    If you are a basic user that uses the web browser for almost everything or microsoft's own arm compiled tools, this is probably pretty legit with up to 22 hours of battery and a pretty clean design and a decent price point.

    However, the lack of arm compiled software on windows is a big pro

  • For one of these? It is the least you guys could do. Then I can sell this new one and buy something useful like a strawberry flavored dildo.

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