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I still use a Surface RT 2, with Windows RT on ARM, as my main couch-surfing tablet. The battery is not as good as it used to be, and Ad-heavy sites load slowly

I still use a Surface RT 2, with Windows RT on ARM, as my main couch-surfing tablet. The battery is not as good as it used to be, and Ad-heavy sites load slowly because I can't install an adblocker. But it still works quite well for browsing. The fact there are no apps means it hasn't gotten slower: it's still fast enough, although an iPad pro is now much faster. I very much wonder how this new generation of Windows on ARM will work out. On a faster ARM processor Windows will run very well, no doubt. Edge will be a good improvement over IE, the RT version of which was quite good i.m.o. But how will Chrome and iTunes run? Will they be ported to ARM, or will they run under x86 emulation? Will Microsoft finally convince more developers to bring apps to the Windows Store?

deleted 9y ago
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frozenport 9y ago
>>Windows will run very well, no doubt. Unsubstantiated claim. On one hand I'm not convinced that ARM chips outperform Intel. On the other hand we could easily see many apps going through an x86 emulator, which incurs a performance hit against native. At the end of the day you get a performance hit, without a reason that can easily be explained to a user. Intel tablets can be procured cheaply, and most people would pay an extra $10 for something that runs twice as fast.
- slantyyz 9y ago
  >> On one hand I'm not convinced that ARM chips outperform Intel. What does "Intel" even mean? Intel offers such a wide array of chips, from bad to great. If we're talking about the low end of laptops on sale today, then we're probably talking about the Atom Z, Celeron/Pentium N, and maybe CoreM. And those chips are "meh" at best, and are a pretty low performance bar to meet. >> At the end of the day you get a performance hit, without a reason that can easily be explained to a user. Why does it need to be explained to a user? Is the average user even going to understand or care that there's a performance hit? They're just going to know that their computer is slow or fast. And that performance expectation is usually mapped to the price of the machine they bought.
my123 9y ago
IE desktop mode on RT devices has adblocking through Tracking Protection Lists by the way :)
vyrotek 9y ago
I highly recommend setting up a PiHole to block your ads at the DNS level.

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frozenport 9y ago

>>Windows will run very well, no doubt. Unsubstantiated claim. On one hand I'm not convinced that ARM chips outperform Intel. On the other hand we could easily see many apps going through an x86 emulator, which incurs a performance hit against native. At the end of the day you get a performance hit, without a reason that can easily be explained to a user. Intel tablets can be procured cheaply, and most people would pay an extra $10 for something that runs twice as fast.

slantyyz 9y ago
>> On one hand I'm not convinced that ARM chips outperform Intel. What does "Intel" even mean? Intel offers such a wide array of chips, from bad to great. If we're talking about the low end of laptops on sale today, then we're probably talking about the Atom Z, Celeron/Pentium N, and maybe CoreM. And those chips are "meh" at best, and are a pretty low performance bar to meet. >> At the end of the day you get a performance hit, without a reason that can easily be explained to a user. Why does it need to be explained to a user? Is the average user even going to understand or care that there's a performance hit? They're just going to know that their computer is slow or fast. And that performance expectation is usually mapped to the price of the machine they bought.

my123 9y ago

IE desktop mode on RT devices has adblocking through Tracking Protection Lists by the way :)

vyrotek 9y ago

I highly recommend setting up a PiHole to block your ads at the DNS level.