Matthew S Smith’s Post

I said earlier this year that if you don't have to buy a laptop in 2024, you shouldn't. HP's Omnibook Ultrabook is an example of why. It has 55 TOPS of NPU performance—that's almost 20 percent more than the new Copilot Plus PCs with Qualcomm processors, and a 3x to 4x gain over the NPU in prior generations of Intel and AMD hardware. It's reasonable to expect this trend to continue rapidly, and it may well leave older laptops in the dust. Reporting here from Dominic Bailey. https://lnkd.in/eJ7nUdw6

The poor performance of games on new Microsoft Copilot Plus PCs, powered by Qualcomm processors, left me confused. I know for a fact some of the games that perform poorly have Arm-native versions on other operating systems. So why aren't they available on Windows? Well, I found out why. The answer suggests gaming on Windows on Arm has a long road ahead of it. Thanks to Jake Jackson, Aaron Giles, and Ryan Shrout for their insight on this one. https://lnkd.in/gc6BeMhY

Not sure how I managed to go 17 years without a review on PC Mag, but it's finally happened. My focus: the Dell Latitude 9450 2-in-1. A laptop you'd probably never buy for yourself, but you'd be happy to get if your company's IT department assigned it to you. https://lnkd.in/g9sfT6V9

Windows on Arm is here to stay, folks. And the Windows world is going to get a lot more complicated, and complex, as a result. Nvidia, AMD, Mediatek, Samsung…these are just some of the companies that might get in on chips for PCs alongside Qualcomm. It’s a new era. Thanks to Anshel Sag and Leonard Lee for the insight on this one. https://lnkd.in/gkMrnWcd

Look at this thing! Gorgeous, isn’t it? I was pleasantly surprised by the Philips Evnia 8000. I expected the OLED panel to look good, but I was also pleased by the connectivity, menu system, and build quality. https://lnkd.in/gXAvHise

It's interesting how there's a nearly zero percent chance my next phone isn't an iPhone. This level of loyalty isn't remotely close to true for any other device I use.

I think it's been far too long without nuclear as a serious part of the conversation for tackling climate change. It generates incredible energy from very little raw material, and the waste is also minimal enough that it can be tracked and stored responsibility, instead of thrown willy-nilly into the environment. Wind and solar are excellent as well, but given how devastating a problem climate change will become, it seems wise to have as many possible solutions in development as possible. https://lnkd.in/gwKkKKeQ

Qualcomm Snapdragon X is good, but...don't buy it for PC games. Yes, even if you play that one game that's really old and should be easy to handle. There's still a lot of work to do on that end in compatibility, stability, and performance. I suppose you could just stream games, but given the pricing of Copilot+ PCs that feels less than ideal. How gaming plays out is going to be really critical, too, to gauge how Snapdragon X is sustained over the coming year. https://lnkd.in/gW2dcdDS

So...anyone developing games for Windows on ARM? Where's the ARM versions for Civilization VI or Resident Evil?