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Comment by cjk2 | Hacker News Reader

If the following does not happen in 2 years I will eat my hat:

They will have performance problems. They will have compatibility problems. They will have poor repairability and zero repair network and support. The software will be abandoned and completely useless within 18 months. They will fail very early but just outside a standard 1 year warranty. This will be a lot of e-waste. Regulatory or national bodies will step in and force privacy regulations which make all of this unworkable.

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They've been selling ARM Surface devices for a while now. Not sure why these would suddenly fall over and stop working.

Even if the AI stuff doesn't pan out that doesn't make it e-waste, that just makes it a normal PC that could do everything previous PCs could do anyway.

Mostly implied by that large pile of dead Surface machines we had which weren't even remotely repairable and lasted 12-18 months...

If in 18 months anyone feels that their ARM laptop isn't cutting it, i'll gladly pay $0.15/$1.00 for them. I know lots of people who could definitely benefit from a laptop that cannot afford them, and IME ARM runs linux just fine.

I suspect they will be locked down like the RT devices were...

Why would you suspect that, given that already released Windows on ARM devices are not at all locked down like RT devices were?

Really? Just researched this recently and it seemed the consensus was linux on Arm Surface devices is still mostly a non-starter.

will that be the case in 18 months?

Wait, are you the other guy that bought a Windows Surface RT? :)

We should make a club.

Um, err, yeah :(

I’m in lol

I'd join, but Metro Internet Explorer crashes whenever I try to message, and the tablet battery won't last me the trip to the club...

Does this prediction also apply to the HP, Dell and Lenovo devices with Qualcomm Oryon / Snapdragon X?

Yes. All of them. There has been a massive race to the bottom recently.

That's tragic. Was pre-2020 PC laptop hardware more reliable, from any OEM?

Apple hardware seems to be relatively unchanged, or even improved since the keyboards were fixed.

How about current Framework devices, which aspire to be repairable? Hopefully they will offer an Arm-based laptop, tablet or mini-PC.

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