I have to say though the prices of those windows on arm are far too expensive for what they are imo, I was expecting prices around 399-499$...why would you buy one when you can have a raven ridge notebook for near same money?
Battery life would be my guess. Performance and price won't be there on this generation of products. Qualcomm is through testing the waters, though, and wants to get product on shelves to establish some mindshare (if nothing else, at least among OEMs).
You also have to ask yourself, "What software ecosystem does MS want for themselves in the future?" Do they want Wintel or Qualdows? Remember that Win10-on-ARM, at least at the present, is almost exclusively consumer-facing with the Win10 app store being central to the experience. Wintel users have broadly rejected the app store along with most of the "universal" app experience. Mobile users have behaved the same way.
To me, it looks like MS would want Qualcomm to lead the charge into the low-end notebook sector, pushing universal apps as the main feature of Windows devices. That might let MS build a base for mobile products in the future.
I am waiting for the day when arm finally break through the 3.0 ghz barrier. 4 watt chip at 3.0+ ghz, isn’t that amazing?
I dunno how I feel about that. Having a Linux box running something like that would be hella cool. Watching Qualcomm and MS try to wipe out the Wintel platform does not sit so well with me.
Qualcomm said they will be building a bespoke SOC for the job at some point and these kryo 385 have some modifications to help emulation I'm led to believe so things will get better.
The real winner may be an incentive for Devs to start making apps and games universal apps...now that would be very interesting indeed.
I see emulation as being less of an issue. I'm not 100% sure where all the growth potential is
right now but over the last ten years, it has been among those who really don't care as much about x86 compatibility as in days past. People who adopted Google Play and iOS App Store are probably not going to try and run traditional PC software on their notebooks and such. I mean hell look at how many Chromebooks are selling out there.
Folks are more ready than ever to step off Wintel, and MS knows it. They want that universal app thing to be the standard for all Windows software development since it improves their control and their bottom line. It hasn't worked out for them yet, but with Qualcomm on their side . . .