Newsletter Archives

• Can Office and Windows play nice on ARM computers?

  Posted on August 19, 2024 at 02:42 CDT by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  MICROSOFT 365

  

  By Peter Deegan

  ARM-based computers are about to move from a nerd niche to a mainstream product with the arrival of Copilot+ PCs and the increasing popularity of Mac computers.

  What are the compatibility issues for running Windows apps, especially Microsoft Office, on this very different hardware?

  Though Windows and Office look the same on both ARM and Intel computers, their CPUs are fundamentally different. Under the hood, there are big differences in the software layers between the hardware and what you see on the screen. It’s a bit like the difference between a petrol and an electric car — both look and are driven the same, but they have hugely different engines and mechanics.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.34.0, 2024-08-19).

  Microsoft 365 Apple Silicon, ARM, Newsletters, Office, Office on Mac, Windows on ARM

• Making Windows 11 on Arm less obnoxious

  Posted on March 20, 2023 at 02:45 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 20.12 • 2023-03-20

  WINDOWS 11

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  If you’re running Windows on Arm, you really want to be running Windows 11 rather than Windows 10.

  Not only is it the only way to get Windows 11–specific features such as running Android apps or tabs in Notepad, but — crucially for Arm devices — it’s the only way to get 64-bit emulation or the native ARM64 .NET Framework. 64-bit emulation was previewed in an Insider build of Win10, but it shipped only in Win11.

  If you want to run apps such as the most recent version of Photoshop or Signal on your Arm PC, you need Windows 11 to do it. That’s annoying if you find the new Windows 11 user interface as frustrating as I do.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.12.0, 2023-03-20).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Windows 11 ARM, Newsletters, User Interface, Windows 11, Windows on ARM

• Will you be able to run Windows on an Arm processor?

  Posted on June 13, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  SILICON

  

  By Brian Livingston

  The computing scene is up in arms, so to speak, about the latest Arm technology.

  Arm — which began as an acronym but is now more like a religion — is the technology that powers the latest Apple Macs, but it’s made only slight inroads into Windows machines due to software incompatibilities.

  Whether or not you know anything about Arm, you’re probably already using it. Arm-based systems tend to have much lower power requirements than systems using more complex central processing units, such as Intel processors.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.24.0, 2022-06-13).

  Silicon ARM, Newsletters, Silicon, Windows, Windows on ARM

• Looks like an ARM-based Windows laptop is coming

  Posted on November 14, 2017 at 07:50 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  I always take “reveals” like this with several shipping containers of salt, but putting Windows on Snapdragon/ARM chips (as opposed to Intel/AMD chips) is potentially a Real Big Deal.

  Two overriding questions, of course: Can Snapdragon provide enough oomph to work in your particular situation, and is it really compatible?

  Anyway, Habeeb Onawole at Gizmochina has an interesting sneak peek.

  For the ARM notebooks, Microsoft and Qualcomm have signed up with multiple partners. One of them is HP and details of a Snapdragon 835 notebook has been seen on its CarePack Database.

  Tip o’ the hat to MSpoweruser.

  Windows News Windows on ARM

• Which tablets will launch with Windows 8?

  Posted on March 20, 2012 at 21:58 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Interesting question – and it’s hard to come up with any answers.

  InfoWorld Tech Watch.

  Windows News Windows 8, Windows on ARM