4 ms·

Great metric for "good enough" batteries, of an overnight charge. But as devices shrink, the batteries also shrink. Also: if there is a non-trivial market for

by 10ren 17y ago

Great metric for "good enough" batteries, of an overnight charge. But as devices shrink, the batteries also shrink. Also: if there is a non-trivial market for ARM netbooks, Microsoft will produce Windows for it (they probably already do, internally). They are highly sensitive to business risk.

rbanffy 17y ago
Microsoft can't even release improvements of its main OS for a single architecture in a timely, predictable way. It's highly unlikely they can successfully maintain separate ports of Windows (and Office) for ARM. And then, ARM-based Windows notebooks will not run x86-based Windows software. Microsoft has Windows CE for ARM (and others), but it sucks really bad and is bears little relationship to desktop Windows apart from its name (and suckyness, but that is only my opinion).
- ryanpetrich 17y ago
  Windows CE also has bastardized versions of the Win32 and .NET API's
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Do you really believe one could port Office 2010 to them?
    - ryanpetrich 17y ago
      No, I don't think one could. They are the same API's though (with less features, a different implementation behind them, and more bugs)
- timthorn 17y ago
  Don't forget that NT was originally multi-platform. There's nothing fundamental stopping Windows from running on different processors. The porting effort is mostly in the HAL. Office is another story and would need work, although if MS ever carry through on their original plans to convert all their apps to .NET compatibility should come for free.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Except they would have to port Office, games and convince the whole Windows ecosystem to port (and support) everything to different platforms.
- fleitz 17y ago
  Windows already supports multiple architectures: x64,x86 and Itanium. It supports 4 if you count PowerPC (Xbox 360). Office now supports 2 different architectures x86 and x64 and used to support Alpha. I highly doubt that a company with $20 billion dollars in the bank would have a problem porting to ARM even if it didn't already have extensive experience on that platform (WinCE). MS could easily have their OS and Office ported over and released in the amount of time it would take ARM to make any serious dent in the x86 market. Heck, ARMH only has a 4 billion market cap, MS could easily buy the whole company in cash, at that point they'd certainly have the expertise. I'd say it's highly likely they could maintain a port. Realistically, ARM would probably pay MS and send over their top engineers if MS expressed interest in porting Win7 to ARM. NVidia would probably get in on the action too to avoid the x86 licensing problems they are facing against an AMD & Intel that aren't suing each other into oblivion anymore. At least until the next time they decide to sue each other into oblivion.
- 10ren 17y ago
  > And then, ARM-based Windows notebooks will not run x86-based Windows software. Yeah, loss of platform is the real problem. Windows isn't that great; its software is. Same for intel. Hence the "wintel platform". However, we have this new "web" platform, which might not be good enough, or have enough products, or be fast enough - but it is improving all the time. Perhaps, call it the web+arm = "warm" platform (though the ARM isn't part of the platform; any web will do). BTW: if windows is written in a high level language (C), it just requires that the compiler targets a different processor. Of course, any tweaks written specifically for x86 (esp inline assembly) would have to be dealt with, and perhaps performance wouldn't be adequate with a simple retargeting - ARM would also need tweaks (again, esp inline assembly).
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    "However, we have this new "web" platform," You know... We have had this new open-source platform that created lots of programs that can run on anything. I use Firefox on Windows PCs (it's not my fault - company policy), on Linux PCs, on a PPC Mac (and an IBM) and under Solaris on a SPARC box. It works well (apart from Flash support) on all of them. BTW, all these boxes have GNU command-line tools and a decent set of compilers and interpreters (I run Cygwin on Windows). With the exception of Windows and Mac, which impose their looks on users, I would be unable to tell what I am running under the GUI from a screenshot (not really - the AIX box runs CDE).

by 10ren 17y ago

rbanffy 17y ago

Microsoft can't even release improvements of its main OS for a single architecture in a timely, predictable way. It's highly unlikely they can successfully maintain separate ports of Windows (and Office) for ARM. And then, ARM-based Windows notebooks will not run x86-based Windows software. Microsoft has Windows CE for ARM (and others), but it sucks really bad and is bears little relationship to desktop Windows apart from its name (and suckyness, but that is only my opinion).

ryanpetrich 17y ago
Windows CE also has bastardized versions of the Win32 and .NET API's
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Do you really believe one could port Office 2010 to them?
  - ryanpetrich 17y ago
    No, I don't think one could. They are the same API's though (with less features, a different implementation behind them, and more bugs)
timthorn 17y ago
Don't forget that NT was originally multi-platform. There's nothing fundamental stopping Windows from running on different processors. The porting effort is mostly in the HAL. Office is another story and would need work, although if MS ever carry through on their original plans to convert all their apps to .NET compatibility should come for free.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Except they would have to port Office, games and convince the whole Windows ecosystem to port (and support) everything to different platforms.
fleitz 17y ago
Windows already supports multiple architectures: x64,x86 and Itanium. It supports 4 if you count PowerPC (Xbox 360). Office now supports 2 different architectures x86 and x64 and used to support Alpha. I highly doubt that a company with $20 billion dollars in the bank would have a problem porting to ARM even if it didn't already have extensive experience on that platform (WinCE). MS could easily have their OS and Office ported over and released in the amount of time it would take ARM to make any serious dent in the x86 market. Heck, ARMH only has a 4 billion market cap, MS could easily buy the whole company in cash, at that point they'd certainly have the expertise. I'd say it's highly likely they could maintain a port. Realistically, ARM would probably pay MS and send over their top engineers if MS expressed interest in porting Win7 to ARM. NVidia would probably get in on the action too to avoid the x86 licensing problems they are facing against an AMD & Intel that aren't suing each other into oblivion anymore. At least until the next time they decide to sue each other into oblivion.
10ren 17y ago
> And then, ARM-based Windows notebooks will not run x86-based Windows software. Yeah, loss of platform is the real problem. Windows isn't that great; its software is. Same for intel. Hence the "wintel platform". However, we have this new "web" platform, which might not be good enough, or have enough products, or be fast enough - but it is improving all the time. Perhaps, call it the web+arm = "warm" platform (though the ARM isn't part of the platform; any web will do). BTW: if windows is written in a high level language (C), it just requires that the compiler targets a different processor. Of course, any tweaks written specifically for x86 (esp inline assembly) would have to be dealt with, and perhaps performance wouldn't be adequate with a simple retargeting - ARM would also need tweaks (again, esp inline assembly).
- rbanffy 17y ago
  "However, we have this new "web" platform," You know... We have had this new open-source platform that created lots of programs that can run on anything. I use Firefox on Windows PCs (it's not my fault - company policy), on Linux PCs, on a PPC Mac (and an IBM) and under Solaris on a SPARC box. It works well (apart from Flash support) on all of them. BTW, all these boxes have GNU command-line tools and a decent set of compilers and interpreters (I run Cygwin on Windows). With the exception of Windows and Mac, which impose their looks on users, I would be unable to tell what I am running under the GUI from a screenshot (not really - the AIX box runs CDE).