Always Connected PCs - Windows RT Part II - so kind of...

So one of the big announcements last year from MS was take 2 on Windows on ARM CPU with the partnership announcement with Qualcomm along with the commitment from 3 OEMS, HP, Asus and Lenovo to produce Qualcomm Snapdragon based PCs that included LTE support and eSIM that would be called Always Connected PCs.

Back in the Windows 8 days, MS introduced Windows RT which was also based on ARM and while many folks liked it - it eventually failed due its extremely limited app support.

Always Connected PCs (ACP) are take 2 on this capability.   There are 2 big goals in ACPs.  First is phone-like battery life.   OEMs were claiming 20+ hours under "normal" usage.  The second was the integrated LTE support and associated power management that would allow the devices to have "instant" on and always connected capability like smartphones.

In addition these devices run full blown Windows 10 - albeit the 32bit edition.

The initial release of these devices are starting to hit the various enthusiast blogs and the initial feedback is very mixed.

So first some surprises.  Some of the test systems arrived to reviewers running Windows 10 1703.  So nearly a year old OS.  This was surprising to me since I expected them to be running Spring Creators (1803) out of the box.   

So this meant the first thing most reviews had to do was update to Fall Creators and in a couple of weeks update again to Spring Creators.   Not a good first impression...

Most reviewers are stating that yes there is some battery life extension over Intel based Ultrabooks running the U edition CPUs - but not to the extent that the OEMs where touting.  Some saw 12hrs instead of 22hrs for example.  

But the cost of that battery life is performance.  The initial units are based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset - which is what my Pixel 2 XL uses.  Now my Pixel 2 XL running Android is pretty fast.

Running Windows 10 however is another story.  And even though the 835 is a x64 CPU - both the OS and all apps MUST be x86 32 bit and they run in an emulator which is always a negative impact on performance.

All reviewers are calling out pretty dismal performance.  Some apps taking upwards of 10 minutes to get past their splash screen.  Others complained about content development apps (i.e. word processors, etc) not keeping up with the keyboard. 

MS promotes ACPs as primarily content consumption devices - so listening to music, watching movies, etc. with limited content creation - so emails, documents, etc.   On the consumption side reviews seemed to be okay with the exception of games which most panned as being horrible.

Even the store experienced was mixed as apps were shown to the reviews that they actually couldn't install.  In theory the store is supposed to screen for that.

I have not seen any feedback yet on LTE performance or experience yet - but honestly I expect it to be like a 2017 phone.   

And then there is the price of these units.  While the AsusGo is a somewhat reasonable $599 - the HP Envy X2 starts @ $999 and the top model is over $1200.  An okay yes the X2 sports a keyboard and pen but still...that's way too much for these devices.

I recently wrote about my experience rebuilding a 4yr old Dell Venue 8 Pro running an Intel Atom 3740D CPU with 2G RAM and 64GB storage with LTE.  So effectively an ACP before there was ACPs.  

From the sounds of the reviewers - I'm glad I spent my money there than buying one of these units.   The Venue is certainly no rocketship but it also native x86 - so no emulation and it runs a lot larger portfolio of apps.  As many of the reviews mentioned there appears to be another wave of these devices coming with Intel based CPUs and LTE chips - maybe then I'll take a more serious look...