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I've stopped using Windows as a Microsoft fanboy (I use C# to put bread on my table). I loved Windows, I think it peaked at 8 (yeah I know, unpopular take!) because 10 started out niceish, but went downhill and has been going downhill since, and Windows 11 is similar, just downhill to the max.

I wish Microsoft would separate their marketing shenanigans from Windows more drastically and stop requiring online accounts. My OS should be able to fully install and function without any internet, and continue to do so.

I'll default to buying Macs and Linux first systems instead.

I do hope these new Nvidia laptops see Linux flavors, I'd love to buy one. Maybe System 76 might build one? Not sure.

Similarly on the higher end, I want to run linux on Apple Macbook laptops.

It's a bit of column A and a bit of column B. Of laptops I'd like to run Windows on, I'd definitely choose the latest MacBook. Of reasons I don't run Windows on all of my desktop hardware, it's mostly because it's loaded with bullshit.

> Call me a hater, but the problem is Windows, not necessarily the hardware.

Thing is, MacOS was heading the same way until the new chips saved it. The last few versions that were still running on Intel shouldn't have been as slow as they were.

Software is going to shit everywhere, it's just there's now M* equivalent for Windows and Intel.

All that to say: yes, I think you're spot on, the problem is sowftware, not hardware.

I'm curious about the openness of the platform. As long as the openness and standardization of the PC platform is not present, this platform is not a contender of x86 in my eyes. We can see with the highly praised Apple M platform on the example of the Asahi Linux what the lack of openness brings: people are locked in to operating systems by the vendors, and planned obsolescence, even with long support periods. On the other hand the PCs abandoned by Windows 11 support (sometimes even 1 year old models!) had the freedom to choose from a variety of operating systems, all thanks to the openness of the PC platform.

Repairability is important, but why repair something when you can only use terrible, soon out of support operating, which spy on you? (This means practically any OS vendored by large corporations)

For ARM systems openness boils down to the custom boot process, and of course the driver support. Has ARM PC vendors standardized on a boot standard yet? I cal recall the horror on reading articles how Raspberry Pi boot was working, or how M1 Mac bootloader is locked down.

Though in fairness: Windows on ARM (even ignoring the earlier iteration of it from ~2016) has had a year or two to mature thanks to the Copilot+ PCs. And, this particular chip seems near-identical to the one Nvidia put in the DGX Spark (again, even ignoring earlier ARM CPUs from Nvidia like Tegra in the Nintendo Switch).

I just got one of the lighter Snapdragon surface laptops and the software ecosystem is still hit and miss. LuaJIT in particular still has build problems on WoA and that's unfortunately upstream of a lot of stuff I use day-to-day. The NPU is apparently neat if you're into LLMs (it can allegedly run gemma) but that's not my thing.

> Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of the screen.

ThinkPad P1 is the machine for you and you can run Linux on it.

>Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of the screen. The screen seems to be particularly bright, which is good. There are claims of good self repairability, we will see when it starts to sell.

Oh you mean like the incredible MacBook Pros of the last two generations that have been selling like hotcakes and have a surprisingly similar design to this device? "Redmond, start your photocopiers" never gets old.

I worked with some of the people responsible for the Surface Book, Surface docks, and specifically the Surface Book's dock. These were hardware people (EEs), not software people, and this was after their time at MS. Unfortunately I don't remember specifics (both because it's been a few years, and because I'd probably have to fuzz details anyway), but... :

Docks are horrifying products. Thunderbolt docks are doubly horrifying. They ordered in every single competing dock they could find, from that era's products, and found that every last one was garbage in some way or other, usually fatally so. The Thunderbolt interface in particular, and the firmware that needed to run on that interface controller, was the source of a lot of issues. None of them were particularly intrinisc to the protocol, but the hardware available was junk and the software available was worse. They couldn't really order up a custom non-garbage IC just for a $100 accessory that sells in limited volume. (Apple, however, could and would; they'd also demand to control the whole stack. This shows.)

They were very proud they got the thing working as well as they did, even though they all knew it was still pretty much trash. It was still better than the competition. Which is sad, but what can you do?

(At least it wasn't the Wi-Fi chip. The Surface Book's Wi-Fi adapter was chosen by higher-ups as the same one used in the XBox, presumably for sourcing reasons. It is trash. Again, much blood, sweat, and tears were spilled making it work as well as it does.)

(I also have the exact circuit for the LED that lights up on the charger cable. Apparently it was a big deal, which I find hilarious.)

My absolute favorite fact about the Surface is that if the battery runs out, the Surface Dock power is unable to bootstrap it. You have to plug in a charger

Not sure if that's still the case but truly astonishing

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-dock/tro...

Interesting. I've had exactly the opposite experience. The Surfaces I've owned (3 so far, over the last 8 years) have been much more reliable than the other Windows laptops I've used over the same time period (mostly at work). To the point I bought myself one for work and didn't bother trying to expense it because I was so happy to have a laptop I could rely on (and I could use it for personal use once it was "retired"). Not invalidating your experiences, but they've been really solid for me.

You have to pay me to use Microsoft. There software has become garbage and alternatives are far more better. I cannot think of a single product they have I will be willing to use personally.

Hardware, Frameworks has replaced any other OEM in the market for me. You have to pay me to use Dell, HP, Microsoft, Asus, Apple, ...

Counter-point the Surface Studio was one of the best PCs for drafting and design we've ever owned.

Oh wow. I love mine, so much that I've never been back to the apple laptop eco system since. The two surface laptops I've had are the best laptops I've owned.

The build it rock solid, its trivial to run wsl for a Linux environment and I still get a windows environment for work with excel, etc.

The keys don't come off the keyboard like they do with my old mac chicklet style laptop keys and even my 10 year old can still drive multiple external monitors.

I similarly bought a surface laptop during Covid WFH - better Remote Desktop experience for the windows shop I was working at. Assumed that spending the extra for premium Microsoft hardware, “it just works” - not at all. I ended up using my Mac’s USB-C Ethernet dongle because the dock would just lose the Ethernet driver. Insane for an ecosystem fully owned by one company, but very telling of the company.

> local Microsoft Store

The backrooms version of an Apple Store… I’ve been to precisely one and it was, indeed, a sad experience.

You’d also need to pay me a lot to use Windows. I even have an assigned Windows virtual desktop at work, but I also have a MacBook for actual work - the VDI is only used for the stuff that doesn’t quite work right on Macs.

I only have used the power connector on a Surface Go tablet but have really no complaints. I've never been much of an MS person, but with that thing Windows (10) certainly left on a high note for me.

I've used surfaces of various kinds for more than 10 years. Overall they've been significantly less troublesome than the laptops from other major brands I've had over the same period. I put this down to the dogfood eating nature of the Surface. Whoever is responsible for the sound interface driver in a Dell laptop is unlikely to be a user of that laptop and even less likely to have the capability to get Dell to ship a fixed version. Microsoft however I suspect uses Surfacen extensively in house. In this respect it makes the Surface products more akin to Apple computers. The same is probably true for high end Chromebooks. I never used a dock, fwiw.

I've been managing dozens of Surfaces for work.

Never had any issues with them. Solid hardware and a good alternative to the Lenovo Thinkpads we're also using but "don't look so nice".

Thunderbolt docks being absolute dogshit is universal across the market, it's not limited to one manufacturer.

Apple doesn't have this problem because they don't even make docks they're so problematic. Enjoy dongles, Mac users.

Modern docks usually run their own internal OS and require frequent reboots to even attempt to appear stable.

The worst part is most use docks to get Ethernet, but docks nearly universally use low quality USB Ethernet controllers internally (vs PCI) making the whole exercise rather pointless.

I remember these issues from earlier Surfaces. I was not impressed. Latest ones are pretty dope tho, IME.

I also had a bad experience, but I'm willing to throw all that out of the window after seeing that it had 128 unified memory on a CUDA enabled device. This is an AI native dream machine from what I can tell. I'm almost obligated to buy one.

> ultrasonic chirp authentication

Source? Can't find any good source on this.

Wow, very interesting example.

Yeah, apple, they can be huge a-holes simply because they can. Your integration story is nice, but same company does this actively: If you have airpods pro (2nd gen in this case) that kept working fine with apple phone, but then you got tired/annoyed/disgusted by their OS and ecosystem and migrated to Samsung S24 (my wife' story), those plugs effectively stop working via bluetooth.

Disconnects, no good ANC, pairing is beyond miserable. Use them again with another iphone and they work fine. Now somebody could claim apple engineers are so incompetent they can't implement basic bluetooth connection that plugs from china for 10 bucks can do better but I have problem believing that.

So that tight integration you praise so much can be absolute curse for arrogant behavior that apple is definitely not stranger to. Open standards and competition forces companies to behave nicely and ie buy bluetooth plugs without worry if any source device will work with it, not some wishful thinking. Main reason I never owned apple device and most probably never will, just insulting behavior towards me as paying customer.

Depending on how easy it is to run Linux on this as opposed to the new MacBooks may make this attractive for Linux users.

Anyway, the whole trend to change from x86 to Arm on laptops is bad news for compatibility. It might be that the era where you can download an iso and expect Linux to run on a random laptop is over, and Linux users will have to stick to only a couple of devices with well known support. Did Valve release a laptop yet?

I get it’s not what you’re asking for, but WSL on windows is a lot more friendly than anything Apple has done in the last decade to assist in Linux support.

And you lost me at proprietary Microsoft drivers.

No way I am spending any money on this future brick.

I really hope for competition’s sake that Microsoft makes some reforms and cleans up Windows.

Because us nerds like to say “the software is awful,” but really, the bones of Windows are not awful at all. It generally works well, it just takes a lot of work to get all of the BS out of your way.

If you’re looking for open source friendly, just buy a Framework 13 Pro and be done with it.

By the way, the other news from Computex is Dell and HP’s Macbook Neo competition, and they really look legit. So, Apple is waking up the PC industry a bit, showing them that they are endangered. Hopefully Microsoft gets the memo.

> Too bad the software is awful. Thankfully the Linux Surface community is pretty strong.

And how Linux fix the software problem?

>Too bad the software is awful.

I swear, people just live in their echochambers these days. Win 11 pro + WSL2 is literally the best, do it all OS you can get these days.

Most peoples experience is with Windows home, which ironically is about as intrusive as Mac OS. When you get Windows Pro, you can disable all the annoying AI/Advertising shit that comes with Windows, and at that point, you get a system that is cleaner than Mac OS.

Then you install WSL2, which is a full linux environment down to being able to run graphical apps, use gpus natively, and even talk to usb ports.

Ive been on Win11 Pro for 4 years. The only major things that are installed under windows for me are VPN Software, Steam (with games), Ollama, and Browser. Everything else, I run under WSL2.

> slow to wake, the touchpad stops working once in a while & needs to be reset

I was eyeing SP for several generations and could never commit to it just because of issue like that. I want a fast device that's 100% reliable. SP felt sluggish whenever I picked it up in a store.

It's also shockingly twitter-nerd-coded. "The cure for token anxiety", it advertises. To be honest it's hard to see why anyone would buy this product so maybe they decided to take a wild swing with the marketing. The only use is people who really, really, want to run models locally vs getting a much cheaper and higher performance result from a cloud host.

The emphasis on the fans kicking off also had a bit of a turn-off.

Ya, i dont know of anyone wanting to run very large AI models in a windows environment. Or, frankly, on a laptop. Why not just VPN into a dedicated server?

> This was presumably because Microsoft and the NFL had a deal where everyone on the sidelines were using Surfaces and they thought it was a good idea.

Everyone except Bill Belichick, who famously hurled his Microsoft Surface to the ground when he was first forced to use it:

https://youtu.be/djB2xgALGfI?si=xX-hMibm9OLLAJZ4&t=10

Microsoft doesn't have the focus to do hardware as complex as a laptop. They want to be able to provide hardware, but they won't make the required investments, they won't delegate the responsibility to a single manager, nor would they give that person the power to say "fuck off" when marketing, or who ever dreams this up goes "LOL, make it AI".

The margins on good hardware simply isn't there for Microsoft. It also don't look good if Windows works flawlessly and fast on Microsoft hardware, but craps out on the $300 - 400 shitty laptop their partners make.

> an ARM device that had the battery life of Apple Silicon, yet was a real computer that wasn't locked down, ensured/promoted ARM compatibility with their ecosystem

Isn’t that what this is? (Or is supposed to be?)

I owned a Surface Book v1 for a couple of days before returning it. It was a garbage device with tons of issues. I will say it had amazing keyboard though.

I have a surface Go gen 1 and its quote snappy for such a machine though I rarely use it. I personally would not touch an MS Arm device.

That's what modern Surfaces are. The consumer models have been Qualcomm SnapDragon based since 2024, they are pretty fast, battery life is pretty good and you can do whatever you want. Although native Linux support isn't quite there but I mean MS isn't exactly making it their priority.

Skip proprietary Microshit. Go straight to a framework laptop. Load up your favorite distro and never have to worry about poor repairability or non-upgradeable/soldered components

It's not a valid comparison. Up until this (theoretical) machine, the playing field wasn't equal. Windows laptops in general couldn't really compare in many aspects with Macs since M1 (outside of gaming), batteries were horrible due to bad efficiency, performance wasn't amazing even with the best SKUs, and the distance between the vendor and Microsoft was always impacting different aspects of the finished product. Even with the ARM Surface, the ecosystem still wasn't ready for ARM, the performance was lacking. If this device doesn't cost an arm and a leg, it will offer something that is really the first instance of a Windows device that's a better choice than an M-Macbook in many ways (at least on paper).

ARM Windows laptops are a pretty different scenario now than when the Surface came out. They have pretty seamless x86/64 emulation built in similar to when Apple started their Mac transition to ARM. In contrast the OG ARM Surface didn't run any existing Windows software.

Most people could pick up a modern Windows ARM laptop and everything they do would work just fine, just potentially with less heat and longer battery life than their older Windows laptop.

The primary annoyances would be Windows itself and its ad and engagement driven UI reminding you about Copilot and Edge every chance it gets.

And for many others, the appeal of a Windows PC is that it doesn’t run macOS. But I agree that ARM is still a caveat for those machines, in particular long-term driver support.

What do you mean by the OG ARM Surface? The Surface RT from 2012, or the later Qualcomm-powered ones? The Qualcomm-powered ones are vastly more capable than than Surface RT was.

I've been using a Qualcomm ARM laptop for the past year, and pretty much everything I use runs natively on it.

Very true, it’s a shame apple software and OS has gone to shit lately.

I have been leaning more into framework myself. My current devices are aging out but I am in a place where I am fully separated from apples walled in garden so switching is easy

>For many, the appeal of a Mac is that it isn't running Windows

Pretty much. I broke down and finally bought my first Windows machine in over a decade to play Subnautica 2. It was so infuriating to use I returned it a week later. You literally have to hack it with shell commands to bypass Microsoft login now. Never again.

"Offensive trash" is a bit much, most organizations use it without too many issues. I think it's pretty good!

The whole forum here is bashing Windows for being thermal / performance disaster compared to apple products. I do not see how a laptop running Linux will evade the same fate (at least the bashing :).

Where did you find the 300GB/s? That's indeed disappointing if true.

Yeah, I think I'd rather die than go back to the current iteration of Windows for dev work.

Same experience. I still have one of the Snaprdagon X1 Elite surface laptops for the few times i need a windows machine, it's nice. It's about the closest you'll get to a MacBook in Windows land.

Also unlike the rest of HN, I don't have complete hatred of Windows. I wouldn't mind picking up one of these, but I'm almost certain the price is going to be somewhere between unaffordable and completely ridiculous.

If they put Linux on it I'd buy it, but with Windows 11, no thanks.

Indeed. Never buying a windows computer ever again. Every time I use it I get angry.

Hopefully it will be possible to hackintosh it. You can hackintosh almost any computer these days.

Agreed. I'm trying to buy a laptop right now (Lenovo's checkout refuses to take my card?!?), and I would try one of these if it could run Debian.

Will never buy one if it's Windows only, though.

They could fix that but that means losing market share. Microshit shareholders don’t like that

When will these companies realize nobody wants to talk to an AI? The reason we begrudgingly pick up the phone is because some problem is not solvable through the website. The last thing we want at that point is an automated system parroting the website back to us, or telling us to go there ourselves

Linux surface is awful, but also not actually Surface Surface. I did it, it sucked. I went back to windows and everything works primo, exempt its windows. So while I agree, I dont. PSA: wayvnc

I work at an ewaste recycling company. We're inundated with Surfaces often, from Gos and Pros, to Hubs (the TV-sized touchscreens). You haven't played solitare until you've played it on an 84-inch touchscreen.

I use a Surface Go at home (running BlissOS) and a Surface Pro as my work "laptop" (running Debian KDE). I forget which generations they are, but they're probably 8-ish years old, so if they haven't died yet, they're probably good. They both work well for what I use them for, and are better laptops than actual laptops for what I need a laptop to do.

Hilarious, "Designed for serviceability" is one of the headline features about 3/4 down

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-lapt...

In recent times support is part of what I consider when I buy Apple products. It is by no means the best but I can always get a human at whatever time of day and they will listen to my problem and attempt to address it.

But as for getting rubber feet, I'm sure it's some backwards process with Apple too, if at all possible.

I would be 3d-printing some janky feet in TPU before submitting myself to that process. Even if they "wear-out/fall-off", I can print some more.

I wonder how much Microsoftisms are going to be thrown into the Surface Ultra.

Surface-linux has done a ton of work to get some support, but yeah: they are quite the special devices:

> In contrast to other devices, however, some newer Surface devices route their keyboard and touchpad input via this controller. Unfortunately, every new Surface device requires some (usually small) patch to enable support for it, since devices managed by SAM are generally not auto-discoverable.

There is a huge feature matrix, so at least you sort of know what you are getting. Amazing work from open source folks! https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...

Isn't that a little unfair? You'd have an even worse experience running Linux on a MacBook.

It sounds interesting from a hardware perspective, but yeah, IMO no one other than Apple has the luxury of shipping a PC with second-class Linux support anymore. If the Linux experience is anything less than perfect, it's DOA.

Also, USB-A in 2026? Really? That was already an automatic disqualifier for me at the start of the decade.

Could it be that new tech that passes air over the board without a fan? Was announced last year, I forget what it was called

My surface book 2 has the best feeling keyboard I ever used on a laptop. And I still really like the overall unique form factor and 3:4 display with touch support.

But it didn't age too well, the battery is giving up and the SSD is pretty slow. Plus windows being a real slug doesn't make the experience that great anymore

>Wacom on the go

?!?

https://surfacetip.com/surface-laptop-studio/

notes:

>Supports Microsoft Pen Protocol (MPP)

which is NTrig --- or do you use a Wacom AES stylus? (bought a Bamboo AES stylus, but it wouldn't work w/ my Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10)

Or are you genericizing "Wacom" as "active digitizer stylus"?

And I have one that I use as thin client for my desktop, Linux made it usable! 10 year old surface pro 3, 8 to 9hr battery life, takes less than 20s to boot up to Gnome, no issues browsing on Firefox, it's a solid device on the go. And to my total surprise, it retained charge even after almost a month of no usage.

I have only had three and they have been very good. Still using one as my daily driver.

First one had a battery bulge and got a free replacement to the current version. I think that went from 2016 to 2017. That one actually lost a battery bank and I got another upgrade to the 2018 version. The keyboard died on that one for some reason and they just replaced it for free.

I could understand if platform decay has occurred since 2018 though. But for a while, it was excellent.

I wonder if this is just a way to recycle the chips that did not bin good enough to used for DGX Spark?

"Enterprise" people. There's this whole other world of legacy enterprise software where people do things that run companies, write large-scale software with an ancient version of .NET, and run this software on Windows servers.

It’s in the first line of the article. It’s for people that make the world, obviously

I remember when they first pivoted from multiperson multitouch tables to tablets. It sounded like a really cool device - even got me to walk into a Microsoft store.

Then I realized that it used the same shitty Windows with the same shitty registry that I had mostly avoided for my whole life to that point. I certainly wasn't jumping in on that tablet.

I do windows (Desktop) dev for work, and am interested in running local AI. I'd be really happy to have a machine with 64GB shared memory and a decent x64 emulation.

> the software I might want to use doesn’t support arm

Doesn't Windows come with something like Apple's Rosetta to do on the fly translation? I expect it wouldn't work with games, but most other kinds of software should work.

Rosetta worked quite well for Apple so I would expect Microsoft could do something similar.

creative industry/enterprise. similar to Asus ProArt line and high end ThinkPad workstations

>Who is the target market for this?

People who actually do real work and are interested in gaming, unlike people who just buy Macbooks to run VsCode and browse the web.

I mean, I used to be - with the disclaimer that I worked at Microsoft for a while (left in 2019), there was a hot minute when Surface devices were good and on an upward trajectory to become great. Microsoft was doing interesting things with new form factors and interface devices-- the Surface Book, Studio and Dial weren't all hits, but they were some of the only noteworthy experiments in PCs-- and they actually cared about build quality in a way pretty much no other PC manufacturer did.

Then Panay left, Windows 11 has been a debacle, and Nadella seems to give zero fucks about anything which isn't Copilot or Azure, so the Surface momentum that they spent so much time building has just coasted to a complete stop. It's sad.

Nvidia is only slightly better than Apple when its come to providing hardware documentation.

And their hardware is much more locked down. E.g it cant be reverse engineered as easy as Apple Silicone because Nvidia GPUs basically run own OS inside themself.

So practically only Nvidia able to build open source drivers for this, but so far it looks like it will take them another decade with current rate.

My thought as well. As a Linux or BSD machine, this is a portable beast

Honestly I was ready to mock this thing out of existence, but I think you're on to something as there is a contingent that wants the Macbook Pro style laptop to run Linux and I think they'd be happy to settle with a copycat.

Alas, it is a laptop from Microsoft so hardware support in Linux is probably going to be painful as always.

Hard to say whether you'll get the Macbook Pro experience though.

They implied it might have options with < 128G of memory. That could significantly reduce the price of components. There's also the very real possibility that the whole venture is being subsidized by Microsoft - or even NVIDIA itself - as a bid to get into a different space. Even with that, though, I doubt it will be cheap.

It would be a steal at $5k tbh, with todays RAM prices.

I’d wait for some actual reviews before celebrating. Because I just doubt this is as good as they are hyping. And it will still run the same windows ad ridden broken OS.

With 128gb memory this thing is going to cost a fortune.

That's what the Surface was supposed to be. It's Microsoft's example design for the other OEMs to strive for.

But they pretty much just copied the MBP (and added USB-A)

The second biggest is Microsoft's track record with hardware

In FreeBSD it was `make world` in /usr/src.

Bloody cperciva put an end to that.

It means nothing. The LLM thought it was edgy.

>> What does this mean ? How can you make the world ?

Ask Shakti, Shiva's creative sister.

so, they made a device that targets only a handful of people? They should stop letting copilot write their ad copy.

Be a creator instead of a consumer.

> The world is full of makers. Only a few make the world.

Reminds me of all that "Lions. Not Sheep." gear I see people rockin'. LOL

People buy Windows Laptops because they need to run windows.

But everyone saw the M1 and realized that local AI basically made integrated memory the future. People can't choose between "A computer that is good at local AI" and "A computer that runs the OS that I need".

This is the answer to that. I _must_ run Windows, and I _want_ to have a computer with integrated memory.

Agree to disagree. I am enthusiastically waiting for Asahi to sort out its display and power management issues, after which I am instantly switching. I'd even take Win 11 over the dumpster fire that is MacOS Tahoe and I am not the only one who uses is begrudgingly amongst my colleagues.

Eh, I like MacBooks because they've been bulletproof. Any PC I suspect it might just go kaput whenever it feels like it, except for maybe a ThinkPad, but they cost more than a MacBook.

I read somewhere, $4k for 64gb ram

Also RAM was still quite a bit cheaper when the DGX was announced back in early '25.

Is it possible to be cheaper than the DGX Spark? Because that's $4,700. I would think Spark + Laptop would be necessarily more expensive.

Microsoft has always made great hardware, often with partners or acquisitions. If they don't run (traditional) Windows - like the phones - they are really good; if they do run desktop Windows we've gone from useable-but-handicapped to completely unacceptable IMO. They also tend to be side projects within MS; I'd suspect this thing saw the light of day because it was sold as a way to pump more AI at their mostly captive audience.

Apparently 300 GB/sec so basically on par with the M5 Pro but half the M5 Max.

It'd be alright with Linux, probably better than a MBP if you're working heavily with AI (but no other reason to buy it TBH).

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-nvidia_n1x

A lot of enterprise customers still buy windows workstations. When I worked in an IT dept, Dell XPS and Windows Surfaces were given to C levels who asked for Macs but were told they wouldn’t be supported into the windows ecosystem (exchange, office, Active Directory etc). Sadly after all these years the MDM story for macs is still trash.

solid glass haptic trackpad instead of a clicky, mechanical piece of junk one?

The M3 air has no fan either, which is a big reason I bought it, as I record acoustic music and having no fan is the best.

It might be more of a Linux problem than a chip problem…

Also, Windows is probably significantly less secure than MacOS and Apple definitely has the best hardware security in the industry.

They probably just don't have any humans left in marketing that can write original copy. They've all been fired or has their brains turned to mush from using copilot all day every day

Asahi is possible because Apple actively supported booting unsigned OS.

Chances for Microsoft and Nvidia combo doing the same are questionable. Better look for other non-Microsoft laptops on the same platform.

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I'm sure people want this to be true. But it's simply not true. People are learning to accept MacOS to use the hardware. People are buying the Neo because it's cheap. People are buying the Air because it's better hardware than similarly priced computers.

Worse than all of that, long-time Mac users are abandoning the OS.

I bet it will be something like a MacBook Pro but with a windows logo. I wouldn’t expect much different considering the other surfaces look practically the same including the keyboard . Not that that is a bad thing .

Car manufacturers did this but it was usually when the car was going to be a bit of a minger.

> Whatever they all do, they can never, ever match the quality of Apple!

It's a pretty low bar to meet.

Every Mac I've owned has had a hardware failure. Keyboard (x3). Dead trackpad. Display backlight. Logic board. LCD failure. Multiple drive failures. One Apple TV that shit the bed. Many within warranty, some not.

Apple's warranty service is pretty good, but to gloat about "quality"... it's more like when Sonny Corleone throws money at the guy's feet after he smashes his camera.

You must be treating your hardware extremely poorly because all the Windows laptops that have used have lasted many years and were retired before they stopped working due to a hardware defect. In every case however, Linux replaced Windows after the first boot.

MediaTek designed X925 + A725 CPU. It's already been benchmarked in the GB10 products. It is not even close. Like 0.75x SPECint 2017 of the M5.

Microsoft mice were always of exceptional quality...

... until the Surface era, when they either had bizarre designs that didn't work well (like Arc) or else were of cheap build quality and had problematic Bluetooth chipsets.

The first Bluetooth mouse I got was Microsoft's circa 2002, which was an amazing piece of tech back then.

Either your model needs 20+GB or it doesn't. This whole hardware race is about local AI, little else.

That is the opposite of my rule for game consoles. Always buy v1. It is most likely to have unfixable hardware exploits allowing for homebrew use later in its life.

I have no doubt that huffing their own farts until euphoria hits is considered a critical skill.

At this point I don't know what the performance delta would need to be between "fastest I can get that lets me run linux" and "fastest I can get with windows" other than massive.

I genuinely do not want to deal with windows that much.

Fortunately since my computing needs are met by a fast x86/GPU I don't have to make that choice.

They say GPU performance of mobile 5070 RTX and that GPU alone is 50W.

Obviously it only hot under load.

Most commenters here are focused on the Microsoft hardware, but the article mentions systems from several other manufacturers using the same hardware. Some of them, Dell and Lenovo in particular, have good Linux support.

Nvidia has also supported Linux well in general, so let's hope there's an attractive Linux option soon!

Personally I'd be just as happy with a small form factor desktop with the same hardware.

The only reason for someone to buy any of the laptops with this chip is the NVIDIA GPU.

The CPU is decent, but it does not have any advantage over much cheaper and also faster x86 CPUs.

Similar NVIDIA GPUs can be obtained in laptops with discrete NVIDIA GPUs, but there the GPU has access only to a very small memory.

If you really want an NVIDIA GPU with up to 128 GB DRAM, and you are willing to pay a lot to fulfill this wish, then such a laptop can be a solution for you.

The successor of Strix Halo has been announced recently. The CPU is the same as before, just a little faster, but it is significantly faster than this NVIDIA/Mediatek CPU. What has changed is that it supports up to 192 GB of memory, 50% more than these NVIDIA computers.

However, the GPU of AMD is much smaller, with 2560 FP32 execution units, while this NVIDIA GPU will be available with up to 6144 FP32 execution units, but presumably at a much higher price than the AMD systems.

Nah, $5k

Who knows maybe it runs Microsoft’s version of aluminium os or something :D

CUDA support is another reason, if you have a particular need for that.

It's the same configuration as GB10. 20 core MediaTek 3nm part which is competitive with a AMD's 2025 16 core 4nm part with similar power draw.

https://www.servethehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/cpu2...

https://www.theverge.com/news/940275/nvidia-n1x-laptop-proce...

My understanding is that it’s got a bespoke 20 core Nvidia Vera CPU - unified RTX Vera Rubin Spark chip. Seems like Nvidia trying to copy Apple M-series chip

I could be wrong but I don't think there are any arm machines with nvidia GPU yet, I think that would be a first.

So it's probably Intel

Completely garden-variety normal ARM-designed cores:

Cortex-X925 and Cortex-A725

Most people who use this won't have a choice. It will be forced on them by employers.

Yeah what bizarro world is their marketing team living in where that's something to tout?

Yeah I feel like I just read an advertisement someone adapted from marketing materials.

I mean, it's both. PC OEM laptops have sucked for 6+ years that Apple silicon has been out. Apple makes the best laptops on the market.

I'm glad the PC industry is hopefully waking up, finally. I'd like to see some good hardware with Linux support. That's all I've wanted, a macbook pro experience on Linux.

"world makers", quite sober ;)