I have both the Duo 1 and Duo 2. It is definitely a love / hate relationship.
The quality of the hardware is really good. But software has been disappointing since launch. While a lot of the bugs have been fixed, you kinda need to use Microsoft Launcher on this device. And in typical Microsoft fashion, it is worse on their own hardware than on any other phone. You cannot backup and restore your launcher configuration, cannot change the grid sizes, cannot change icons, etc.
Apps do generally work fine because unlike the Z Fold and Pixel Fold, they open on only one screen by default. You have to manually span them across both screens if you want, but very few apps are actually aware of there being a gap between the screens.
I don’t remember who, but someone described this device perfectly imo: Surface Duo is the most amazing piece of tech that I ever owned, but it is also the worst phone that I ever owned.
The article shows a low- and high-powered version of the qualcomm chips - will users of these chips be able to change the power profile of these chips themselves, or will they be locked in before they are sold?
Nowadays Consoles are just locked down, consumer-hostile PCs with many unnecessary artificial limitations. Get an actual PC and install Linux on it, that way you have the freedom to do whatever the fuck you want with both your hardware and your software. Probably the only console that respects its users is the Steam Deck, which also runs Linux. Most games work really well on Linux, and it’s constantly improving. Also check out !linux_gaming
By what apple revealed on the m3, it looks like it’s still going to lose out on cpu, ai, and tdp. Might come close on graphics performance but overall it won’t be good enough.
on PCMark’s webpage the fastest mobile cpu is R9 7945HX with 14k marks. How did they manage to score only 9k in the article?
Passmark already has the latest threadrippers scored, topping the charts at 156k points. As a comparison the 7950X is at 63k points, 7945HX at 56k points, apple m2 ultra 24 core 49k points. So as long as you have the watts to spare x86 will be more powerful?
Nah, if Intel gets their shit together and moves to 2-3nm finally everyone else will start crying. Yes, Intel lags behind everyone today, but they lag just a bit, all while using an extremely outdated tech process.
Also important, will it be available and affordable. I don’t much care about arm laptops if they cost an arm (heh) and a leg to buy and then a couple fingers to import into the mythical and exotic land of not-US.
I doubt it. Many windows applications still are 32 bit only today. Visual studio only got 64 bit support in 2022. Windows has a long history of backwards compatibility and I would expect to be depending on software compatibility layers for a decade or more, even for some Microsoft products.
Being able to run benchmarks doesn’t make it is a great experience to use unfortunately. 3/4 of applications don’t run or have bugs that the devs don’t want to fix.
Was it just because it was arm, or because it was a raspberry pi and had too little of everything else windows likes to hog up? There’s several major laptop manufacturers that are planning to sell laptops with these. I doubt that would be the case if they were all functionally broken to the consumer.
Yet Chromebooks have been a major element for the past 5 years, with more units sold than Apple. I know it’s not technically GNU/Linux. But there’s still a Linux core underneath required to run Chrome OS.
ChromeOS is popular because it’s included in cheap laptops and the operating system is practically idiot proof (at the cost of being able to do practically nothing)
I’d imagine most open source software will just be perfectly fine on ARM on Linux… but I do wonder a little bit about the occasional x86 binary blob we run. They’re generally pretty rare in Linux land… but Steam games are probably not going to have a great time. I’ve used binfmt_misc to run ARM binaries on x86 transparently before using qemu, and it works perfectly fine… but it’s dog slow.
It is worth noting that by the time Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite hits store shelves, Apple’s M3 line of CPUs (which are expected to be announced this week) and Intel’s next-gen Meteor Lake laptops processors with its beefy NPU and GPU, will be the new competition.
That really depends on the TDP of the Intel and AMD chips. Both have been progressively pumping more and more juice into their silicon lately in an attempt to be the “fastest”.
If Qualcomm is within spitting distance at a much lower TDP then this might actually be the beginning of the end for x86.
Qualcomm caused quite a stir last week with its long-awaited announcement of its Snapdragon X Elite platform based on its new Oryon CPU, creating what some are calling the “Apple Mac Moment” for Windows.
During Qualcomm’s keynote, the company went on stage with some fancy graphs and a few handpicked benchmarks, putting it up against Intel’s best 13th-generation Core laptop CPUs and Apple’s M2 (and even M2 Max in one scenario).
More importantly, when we turned around, there were well over 20 Oryon-powered laptops with Geekbench 6, Cinebench 24, PCMark 10, Procyon AI, and 3Dmark WildLife Extreme and Aztec Ruins (pre-commercial builds).
But, similar to Apple, that platform can range from low TDP (thermal design power; basically, how much wattage the chip draws) to very high, with or without fans.
Each time you run a benchmark, the score fluctuates depending on external and internal thermal conditions or any Windows background processes that may temporarily be active.
It is worth noting that by the time Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite hits store shelves, Apple’s M3 line of CPUs (which are expected to be announced this week) and Intel’s next-gen Meteor Lake laptops processors with its beefy NPU and GPU, will be the new competition.
The original article contains 1,296 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The optimist in me says “maybe this is just to prevent cheaters from using XIM and Cronus and it’ll be cheap and easy for other manufacturers to get authorized”
The pessimist in me says “so Microsoft is going to charge a shitton for authorization… great”
I disagree with your premise there. Using a controller that requires absolute input (a mouse) while your opponents use a controller that requires relative input (a joystick) gives you a leg up but it doesn’t remove skill altogether. Using a mouse still requires skill, but it’s easier to learn to use well.
So goodbye custom-built accessibility controllers? Little Timmy, who was born with no arms and loves video games but has to play with his feet on a custom controller, is going to be told “Git good stumpy”?
Microsoft does make a special controller for people with disabilities. Still sucks for people with custom setups. The cheating in fps games is out of control though
They could and probably do (might even be the same anti-hacking system which bans from xbox live from the Xbox 360 days) they aren’t doing this to combat cheating though, they’re doing it because it’ll make them more money. They might claim it’s anti-cheat because the gaming community will drink up that response and respect their decision without questioning it.
Many people who do stand up against descisions like these are usually laughed at or accused of being cheaters, I bet people might even do it to me because I posted this.
I will say that this will likely be all but a setback for cheat devices who can spoof or pass-through an official controller, they will adapt, this change will only truly be successful at killing third party controller support.
Legacy official controllers don’t have a TPM so even if new ones do, current ones don’t and same goes for ones that spoof current official controllers.
At least assuming they’re going to keep compatibility with current official Xbox controllers.
The adaptive controller is designed to be custom-modded for different disabilities.
It’s actually a really cool system they designed in partnership with AbleGamers. They even have a mod for quadriplegic gamers. And it’s super affordable versus previous accessible interfaces.
Accessibility is one of the few places where Microsoft has been wholly good in recent years. Play any first-party Xbox game from the last few years, and you’ll see that the first menu that opens up first time you play is accessibility settings.
In my opinion absolutely not but the gaming community tends to give a lot of leeway towards companies rolling out so called “anti-cheat” solutions, even if they are downright scary i.e. asking users to install always on rootkits, or in this case, anti-consumer by forcing people to buy first or second party controllers.
I’ve even heard people in other situations suggest that anti-cheat systems should have surveillance systems like the ones done on remote exams, which would be downright dystopian and would be a privacy and security nightmare, all for a fucking video game WTF?
On PC you can do whatever the hell you want with your hardware and people aren’t asking to ban it to prevent cheating. This is such a dumb excuse. Build some good anti-cheat or stop complaining. This isn’t the solution.
I get it, but whatever is being done in the PC ecosystem isn’t really solving the problem either. The last bastion of cheating in the console space is 3rd party controllers. Banning them is going to be way more effective than any anti cheat software.
If I was using an unapproved controller I’d probably be pissed, but how big is that market outside of people cheating? Aren’t most 3rd party controllers approved devices anyways?
Ah yes the infamous and completely utterly useless 0x8 hex Microsoft errors.
If I had a nickel for every time I encountered one, I’d have paid Microsoft to properly document what they actually mean, instead of spending 2 years finding some ye olde ass archived help request where some ancient wizard sys admin gives the answer after the default and also equally useless MSFT Associate reply of “Did you try DISM or try to reinstall windows?”
Wait this doesn’t work either? Then download our utterly useless software that will only run chkdsk while showing you ads and has a paywall after you click “apply” because it’s a fake “free” app that does nothing targeted to your grandma and step uncle
By the way the poor ms employee probably doesn’t know what any of them mean they were just generated by ms devs in the other MS building 63 floors below ground where they use infrared light to grow new developers in the bill gates sacred soil
There is also a GUI version, errlookup, it’s included as apart of Visual Studio (C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio2022CommunityCommon7Toolserrlookup.exe) – I’m sure there are other was of getting it too.
windowscentral.com
Hot