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Keep in mind, if you're just using a web browser, Skype and office, these are likely to all be ARM native. It's only when you boot up an x86 program it even comes into play - for a lot of users that will be very rare.

Because they aren't running everyting in the emulator - the kernel, drivers, many of their own apps, and in future possibly 3rd party apps as well are run natively. They're emulating x86 for apps and some system DLLs. (There's a schematic at about 8 minutes.)

Might be costly to emulate x86 - negating the power-saving benefits of ARM, however as it'll be using an SOC, they would have a lower physical presence.

Imagine the motherboard on your phone, but in your laptop. The rest of the space would be used for batteries.

If you imagine a hybrid PC/phone device you could very well restrict x86 emulation to when the device is in PC mode and thus has a larger battery/AC power available in which case battery life isn't as big an issue.

Most computers are idle most of the time.