Experiences with ARM SnapDragon Laptops?

This article — from last December— discusses ARM emulation with the latest Windows, and how it is utilized to allow X86 and X64 applications to run on ARM architecture.
Hope this answers your questions. 😃

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation

Most main-stream apps are already compiled for Windows on ARM, however, if you think about it slightly differently, if an app isn't main-stream, chances are that it's developer hasn't compiled it for the latest architecture yet. It may be simply matter of enough people reaching out to dev and requesting the same.
I don't think Bookworm is compiled for Arm laptops yet. Not sure about QRead.
Personally, I want my next machine to be a Windows Arm laptop, seeing the massive battery life improvements and smooth performance for compatible apps, and I am willing to accept foregoing some of my current apps which may be incompatible as I am okay to find workarounds for those kind of challenges, as well as writing polite emails to Dev or submitting issues/comments on Github. Afterall, if Windows Arm becomes the majority, all of these issues will probably go away on their own.

I've heard that they still have lots of graphics issues though? And wsl apparently isn't as stable yet?

Bookworm, the book reading app? Is so lightweight that even with emulation it just should work in my opinion. Could give it a try on my vm on mac.

Gaming. That is what I want my ARM machine to do. When they get that sorted, my next machine will definitely be ARM-based Windows.

Hopefully, folks with personal experience will chime in. It's probably worth browsing the NVDA.io Google group. Doubtless several Surface Laptop 7 owners on there by now. I'll do that when I feel brave enough (I hate navigating Google groups). Like I've said elsewhere, I can barely restrain myself from getting one to save my dogs from all the cursing I do at my Macs, but I'm holding out either for the smaller one due later in the spring or the X2 model toward the end of the year. Here are a few things I've picked up:

Regarding Bookworm, if your friend buys the computer direct, they've got 60 days to try it for themselves without a financial hit. 2 weeks from BestBuy. I tried Googling it, but only find the GoodReads Android app.

I would expect virtually any app that doesn't get into low-level hardware interfacing to work fine with emulation, and I have no qualms about relying on a program that runs that way if I'm not using it 100% of the time.

I think it was someone on this forum mentioning that they're only getting 6ish hours of battery life. About half of forum commenters around the web have the same issue. I suspect it's about how much emulation they rely on, or else screen brightness. NVDA is a 32-bit app that works seamlessly with ARM components, it is said, but I expect battery drain. JAWS claims to have an ARM version, but I doubt that means they rewrote it from the ground up. I talked with a screen reader developer once who told me there's C+ code in there from the mid-90s! So emulation might be a battery factor there, too. I don't think there'll be much of a noticeable performance hit otherwise from either screen reader.

Note that the claim of 16 or 18 hours is for watching locally-stored videos, and probably for the 15-inch model with the bigger battery. It was more like 11, as I recall, when they measured surfing in multiple tabs. Wi-fi adaptors are a battery drainer. All the more impressive, then, that my M1 MBA still goes days and days on a charge with screen brightness set to 0.

I have the Microsoft surface + Copilot laptop with the Snapdragon Elite plus chip. Everything runs great, even older software and games. I haven't heard of the Bookworm app before now, but QRead works fine.
Only one game has given me any trouble at all and I think that says more about that game than the chip architecture. Even that game ran it would just have a weird memory issue sometimes when trying to launch it which doesn't even happen after their more recent updates.

Mileage will very based on specs, but I can easily get through a normal day without needing to top up the charge and just plug it in at night. Definitely my favorite laptop that I've owned, even over my previous Surface Pro 7.

Which game?

I'm going to laugh if he says Mortal Kombat 1.

Hi, I have a surface book7 with the qualcom snap dragon 12 elete processor. I love it apart from one thing, that is both Epson scanners I've tried won't work no matter what I do.
I've Googled the problerm and it seems this is a well known issue with scanners no matter what manufacturer you choose.
On the bright side it does work with my Epson 5200 wifi printer and scanner but as I'm using wifi for the scanning part it is much slower than when I had the scanner hard wired.

Everything else I've run works well.

All the best

The keyboard is great, nicely sized keys, responsive and has tactile indicators on the F4, F8 and power button. By default the applications key is mapped to bring up Copilot, but that can be changed in settings or by pressing the FN key.

I'm not sure what the exact battery is as I rarely run it all the way out, but I would say more than 12 hours unless you're running intensive games or video conferencing.

And the game mentioned previously was Mist World, not Mortal Combat. haha

Fair enough. I mentioned Mortal Kombat 1 because my current laptop has issues with it. For example, and why this is I cannot say, but I can run Mortal Kombat 11, and 1428: Shadows over Silesia, with maxed out graphics, and the games run beautifully. Oh! Same goes for Forza Motorsports. However, Mortal Kombat 1 has to be played with the lowest possible settings, otherwise it just lags terribly. Luckily I can't see the screen, so the graphics don't really matter to me. However, whenever I have friends over and they watch me play, they cringe at the low graphic settings on that particular game.

... and just for transparency sake, this is my laptop:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BY3PGDZR/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1

From my experience making compromises on hardware (phones, computers, etc.), I have learned the hard way that it is better to go with what I *know* will meet my needs; rather than trying to make a device with compromises work. If you are at all concerned about software or hardware compatibility, my advice from experience is to not do it and stick with what you know will meet your needs.

Again, I am not aware of anything that wouldn't run on this laptop because of the emulation Microsoft built in. Specifically about braille displays, the translation is done by the screen reader, not by Windows itself, so that shouldn't be a problem.

I can plug one in and find out on Monday if you want a 100%, but again, there is no reason it shouldn't. The processor wouldn't effect USB or bluetooth protocols. If it did lots of other devices, headphones, keyboards and so on would be subject to difficulties, too.

Seriously asking here. It may just be that is what will be required if all else fails. 🙂

Hi,
I asked on the Telegram group about Bookworm and ARM processors. I got this response which the user was happy for me to copy here: Python compiles for Windows on ARM I'm pretty sure, so it's then up to whether all the extensions used support ARM64 as well. There at least used to be, possibly still are, some wheels provided straight with the repo that only have x64 and x86 versions. Depends on who's compiling the wheels. If you're using Windows 11 on ARM, though, the whole (x64) app should at least run in ARM64EC (emulation) mode, which will make it perform slower but otherwise still work. NVDA is x86, and that still runs. It has some ARM64 DLLs, but the application itself is still x86, py2exe. They don't have an ARM executable. They don't have an x64 executable either. So in other words, it could work, but could potentially be slower. I do agree with Michael though. If there are doubts about compatibility, don't do it. I wouldn't get a computer with an ARM processor for this very reason actually if I were in the market for a new one at the moment. Bookworm is one of the programs I wouldn't be without personally. And I wouldn't want a potentially slower version of it either. Sorry I couldn't bring better news.

Intel or AMD. So long as its x64. You absolutely do not want an x86 based processor. 😜

Technically I believe they're X86-64 not X64, the latter is a data centre thing. X86-64 is X86 with 64 bit extensions, X64 is built from the ground up for 64 bit.

I am reporting back to say, as expected, no issues with the braille display connecting to this Surface computer. In fact, I typed this message with it.

To address a concern above, if you are running a computer like this, the emulation that some software will go through, such as certain python programs, is not going to result in enough of a slower operation that a user would notice, especially for something like a reading app. The difference, unless you under spec the ram or are running a very resource heavy software, would be measured in milliseconds.

so, ultimately, if you want a machine with better battery life, go for the snapdragon Surface. If you are still concerned that something won't work correctly, though I can't imagine what it would be, or if you need to go for lower specs / cost, then perhaps go with Intel.

If someone will link to this Bookworm app, I'll try that for the sake of being a completionist!

Just wanted to express apreciation for taking the time out for testing out things and putting the feedback here.

Only in the reverse order. I realized that I forgot to post the braille display model yesterday.
I tested with a Brailliant BI x 40.

Bookworm seems like a neat app. Not sure from the short time I've had it if I prefer it to QRead, but that's beside the point. I can report that on my Surface, it runs like a dream. So let not any concerns about Bookworm compatibility hold you back from the laptop of your dreams! haha

@SeasonKing, glad to help. I truly have had no better experience with Windows then on a Surface computer, and in particular this Surface Copilot + PC Snapdragon Elite Plus laptop with Windows 11. Its the experience I would wish for anyone who can have it.

Glad to hear Bookworm works well on ARM laptops. If I ever get one in the future, and Bookworm is still around, it's something to think about.

It's nice to here that traditional apps can work on ARM laptops even with emulation and screen reader. I think as Bookworm is a relatively static app, as in read the contents of a file, display them in an accessible format, I think the emulation layer doesn't do that much of a heavy workload in this case.
Bookworm is just a nice reading tool, if you are in to reading non-technical PDFs and Epubs. I don't think it renders tables nicely yet. And, I am still hopeful about bookshare integration.

What screen readers did you test the Brailliant BI 40 X with? Freedom Scientific's website says that JAWS on ARM64 only supports Focus displays, so I'm curious if it works with JAWS. I would expect NVDA and Narrator to work as well, but if they don't that would be good to know.

Also, does OpenBook work? I think its still a 32-bit X86 program even on 64-bit Windows, so does it run well under emulation, and can you use the Pearl camera to scan documents? I'm thinking of asking for a MacBook Pro from my state's Vocational Rehabilitation agency and running Windows in UTM or Parallels, but the compatibility should be the same as a Snapdragon laptop since they're both ARM64.

I've been using it for work for the last 6+ months (software engineer) and everything runs great.
Battery life around 20 hours, unless I run a million docker containers.
Honestly no complains here, everything is compiled for Windows ARM, and if it's not, the emulation is so great I don't notice.
9/10

Thanks for the feedback on the battery life. I can't wait to see how these do with mainstream gaming. 😎🎮

this is the confirmation I've been waiting for. Just waiting for it to go on sale again for 20% off. It was like that over Christmas and quite a while afterwards. I always set my screen brightness to 0%, which helps quite a bit as well. I keep a mini desktop for things like my scanner. Hardware compatibility concerns are the main issue with the switch.

I am very happy that battery life is not a mac luxury anymore, especially for blind users.
Is anyone able to tell if windows server exists at all or can somehow work on arm?