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Comment by bonzoesc | Hacker News Reader

That's a crazy thing to say. The UI, the APIs, etc. will all be based on Windows 7, and any all-CLR apps should run without change. On Windows 8 running on x86, current apps (and Windows 3.1 apps, and maybe DOS apps?) will undoubtedly still run.

It's just like the Mac Intel transition, but without an emulator to fill in the gaps.

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Who knows? MS might be obsessed enough with backwards compatibility to pack an emulator in there, like they did with WOW64 (though it would be more difficult to write an x86 emulator for ARM).

> it would be more difficult to write an x86 emulator for ARM

Building an x86 emulator is easy. Building one that can run Windows 8 software at speeds comparable to then current Intel or AMD x86 processors will probably be impossible. There is no such performance gap between ARM and x86.

Would the opposite be easier? It might make sense to offer comparability for Windows|ARM executables on Windows|x86, so if you want to hit both platforms, you'd be doing it in ARM.

I can see ARM being great for corporate desktops: .net LOB apps work, IE will work, Office will work etc.

Sure, but one key advantage of Windows is that it has a huge legacy of software that already targets x86 and that would have to be recompiled/reoptimized to ARM.

The performance of a built-for-speed x86 is very forgiving. Eclipse runs well enough on my Core i5, but I suspect it would have problems on an energy-efficient ARM.

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