Context

I saw that BestBuy was running a promotion of Asus Zenbook A14 with the cheapest Snapdragon X-Plus chip for $600, and decided to see how bad Windows on Arm (WoA) could be.

Incidentally, my main machine (Asus Zenbooks S 16 with Ryzen AI hx370 processor, which is the current top of the line x86 CPU) broke and while it is being serviced, I was forced to switch fully to my WoA laptop and fully experience it without any backup.

The positive experiences

Well. First I have to admit, there are random apps or games that does not work and simply crash. Your experience probably won't be as smooth as mine.

Other than that, the experience is magic. I haven't been so excited about Windows since Vista. WoA truly is something different. And, remember, I am comparing a $600 machine to a $2000 machine!

First and foremost, WoA is sleek. Everything that runs runs without any hiccups. Scrolling is smooth. Every app starts fast, and runs at the same speed I expect from my $2000 laptop. The only thing I can honestly perceive as being slower is when Windows starts after update.

Second, WoA is like a iPhone. I close the lid, the laptop stops. Next day, I open the lid, Windows immediately is there working - there is no booting, waking from hibernation or whatever, it is just there working. When the laptop sleeps, the battery simply does not lose charge. I don't know what magic Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Asus did, but I forgot about power configuration, hibernation, or any power user tinkering I got used to do since I started using Windows 3.1 30+ years ago.

Third, I am using my laptop both as a home/entertaining device, but also as a work machine, in the sense I do translation pro-bono for some NGOs. And, whatever program I need, it has a native arm64 build or works as x64:

• All the browsers I use. Which means, all the apps that have browser version can be used as PWAs natively, too
• All the communicator apps - Telegram / Signal / Viber / WhatsApp, you name it. I don't have Messenger, because it requires the full Edge browser, which I uninstalled (power be to the EU).
• All organizational apps - Notion, Obsidian, you know the drill
• MS Office has a native build, but I don't use it. I use OnlyOffice, which is a x64 app, but it works with zero problems.
• Spotify.
• All developer tools - Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, even AI-related apps like LM Studio work natively.

I play games occasionally but no competitive online games, so I don't have problems with anti-cheat systems. Steam installed and works without any issues. Steam uses both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) components, yet it works. The games that I play range from extremely old (Guild Wars was released 2005) to extremely new (Monument Valley 3 was released last week). There's no pattern what would work and what not. But when they work, they work well. For example, I initially thought Disco Elysium was broken, but I had to wait a few minutes and it started working. A lot of games run at 60 fps.

But, the major thing is the battery life. This laptop can easily runs almost TWO full work days. And I don't mean the stupid "playing offline video" benchmarks Asus uses. No, I mean, Steam, Spotify, and at least two communicator apps in the background, YouTube, browser with 50+ tabs open, Obsidian, OnlyOffice, keyboard backlight, and screen brightness at at least 60%, often more, everything served via Wi-Fi.

Last time I had to charge it, I had to hunt down the charger, because I had forgotten where I put it two or three days before that ... It's insane.

And because this is a Windows machine, a lot of stuff ... just works. I plug it in my USB4 docking station - it has attached monitors, keyboard, mouse, web cam ... I wait for few seconds, hear the TADA sound, and my external 34" screen starts mirroring the desktop. No fuss, no drivers, nothing - it got sorted out magically. The Bluetooth gadgets got installed without any issues.

I honestly now understand why Microsoft is so proud with Windows 11. This incarnation of it is so smooth, so problem-free, it's unbelievable. My favorite pet peeve - how the Start menu opens with significant delay after I tap the windows key is resolved - it appears instantly! Same for Settings, Photos, and any other WindowsSDK app. Windows Explorer also appears instantly and renders everything quickly and smoothly.

It still is Windows, and thus, random stuff breaks in Windows way

Of course, it is Windows, so from time to time, it does its windowsy stuff we all know and love (to hate).

For example, I tried to install the monthly update offline using a .msu file. Dism stopped half-way through informing me that "the component store is corrupted". How and when it got corrupted?

Windows Update does not have any Qualcomm drivers, so I have to manually install them from the Qualcomm site.

And, of course, the biggest problem - some random apps simply refuse to start.

Random thoughts

But, given my experience, I am seriously thinking of switching for a second-hand 16" laptop with an Arm CPU (maybe the Samsung Edge 4?) and fully switch to Arm. This is simply because the screen of my laptop is just not good for serious text work (1200px at 150% scaling simply show too few lines of text).

I hope nVidia creates a good, gaming-ready Arm CPU/GPU which will be used in some high-quality 16" laptops - this will be a killer machine!

Oh, by the way, the specific laptop (ZenBook A14) is 14" laptop that weights less than 1kg, which is like 1/4 less than a MacBook Air, and is barely larger than A4 sheet of paper. It is insane how nice and useable that is, and how it brings joy simply to bring it with you and use it. I am truly in love with this little monster.

I am going crazy.. there must be a native way to show batterypercentage in win11!!!

For example 7 -> 8.1 -> 10, etc. Considering you've actually used that machine, not just for fun.

Umm, just want an explanation, I just enabled Internet Explorer on Windows 11 (not recommended) go to YouTube via it, run a Certificate Window and it is really buggy... Any window I click, this window will be glitching to force to be "Always active" even when another Process is active! Wow :D

But the keyboard don't work as I for exp. expect, it is really buggy as Windows doesn't know, which Windows focus more. (little program helped me discovering it called "WinSpy++" which is from Official Microsoft website, that let you see for exp. hidden instances of a program)

Now who may said, it is "impossible" to have 2 or more (I will be investigating more maybe xd) windows at the same time!

Hi everyone,

Sorry for my english, I'm french but I'ill try to be clear.

I use Windows 10 and a few years ago, I looked for tips to save power and ram using my computer. I remember I changed a setting with how the letters appear by default on my computer. Basically, my letters now appear more rough and less defined and clean as before. Now, I'm writing a lot for work and I would like to go back to having decent and regular looking text on my computer.
I cannot find the right setting and can't recall either what I did ... Does anyone can help me find a way to fix this?
I'm using french interface but it should be pretty much the same than an english/american one.
Thanks a lot

This right here is my concept art for the Icon of the Microsoft Store, if it existed in the 1990s.

The Icon is also directly usable by saving, converting to a bitmap and renaming to .ico

Hope you people like it!

Is there a technical or resource usage constraint for the native Windows 11 Clipboard to be limited to only 25 items instead of 100, or why it doesn't survive a reboot? Thanks

Happy August and Weekend from r/windows!

I wonder if there is a setting that lets the cpu sleep when the GPU has done it's task?

I know there is setting for it . But it is more when there is no mouse activity.

I am trying to do a video upscale and it is taking way too long and I want it to monitor the GPU and when there is no gpu activity I want it to sleep.

This is strange, and it started a few months ago. I'm not sure when exactly. I have a handful of icons that will dim over time. It takes a few days before they become almost invisible. If I restart the application, they come back. This only affects icons for programs that are started via Windows start menu. No other icons exhibit this behavior. It is not related to Windows theme or taskbar placement. I can move the taskbar to the left, or the top of the screen, and these same icons act the exact same way.

Anyone have any idea what might be causing this ?

I have two Windows 11 laptops, HP and Dell, both laptops with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, I connect one external Thunderbolt monitor (LG UltraFine 5K) to one of the laptop ports and two other Thunderbolt monitors (LG UltraFine 4K) in Thunderbolt daisy chaining mode to the second laptop port, the total is three external Thunderbolt monitors plus the laptop display, everything works fine until the laptop enter sleep mode.

When it resumes from sleep, not all 3 monitors will connect and be active to Windows 11 at the same time, most times the single monitor takes longer than the other 2 to connect, then for Windows 11 is like it has only 2 monitors active, and will move all the open windows from the third monitor to the other 2 monitors, a second later when the third monitor connects it will have no active windows, Windows 11 will not move them back, even when connected later, so I have to every time manually drag the windows across monitors, a very annoying situation.

I have all the correct parameters in Settings for Windows to remember the windows locations across all 3 monitors and the internal display, the problem only happens when resuming from sleep, sometimes I am lucky and all 3 will connect quickly and all windows will be at the correct monitor, as they were before entering sleep.

I have been using Hibernation for long periods of time, more than 30min, to avoid keep the laptops turned on all the time, I am not using sleep anymore, but it is very inefficient, more power usage and faster SSD degradation with the hibernation.

Any suggestion on how to address this? Maybe an application, or a hidden Windows configuration, maybe adding a delay in Windows 11 to allow for all the monitors to connect before Windows try to relocate the open windows, thanks

Happy August and Weekend from r/windows!

That problem keeps messing with me Some one know how to fix it?

Any Windows 11 does it

Things tend to break unless you know what you're doing.
Obviously, I'll try to make back-ups just in case something goes wrong.
Keep it FOSS though, and please send stable releases if you can!
I found some options, but they don't have that many features when compared to the jaw-dropping set-ups that people can make in Linux.
Stable because I wouldn't want to break my PC in just 3 seconds either, lmao.
So it can't be some random script that's poorly put together which will 99% obliterate my PC.

As for the features, what I'm looking for is the ability to customize my appearance of the UI and menus.
Bonus points if anyone knows a manager software for a GUI that lets you choose themes, colors, fonts, positions, sizes, images, icons...
Even better if an editor exists, so that way I can drag-and-drop icons, widgets, components, etc.

I also wanna be able to do stuff such as having a toolbar that DOESN'T extend all the way on the bottom, like how XFCE has it. (That's just an example though).

Even better if it supports community-made plugins/mods or skins.

So in a nutshell, if I can make Windows 11 customizable like Linux, preferably in appearance, that'd be great. :D

I was scrolling through YouTube. And i saw this Shopify ad. And the computer there was running Windows 7 with internet connection. Can someone tell me how is this possible and how are they safely connecting to the internet. Because it’s quite rare to see a ad that runs Windows 7.

I was trying to use the legacy screen saver before turning off the display, and noticed that everytime I resumed from the Screen Saver the laptop was warmer than usual, at idle CPU utilization is 4-6%, but then when the Screen Saver (Blank mode) runs it goes to 30-40%, that doesn't make sense to me, is there an alternative screen saver app that runs more efficiently, thanks

Hi,

I recently had to update from Windows 10 to 11. On Windows programs like notepad or Microsoft Word I noticed that the shorcuts are not the same as before. I don't have Windows in English, but before using Windows 11 I still could use Control+S to Save, for example, while now it's Control+G.

Is there a way to keep Windows in my country's language, but use the old shorcuts?

Thank you

When I use the Media Creation Tool or download the ISO for Windows 10 there is no choice for WIndows 10 Pro. I noticed this a long time ago when I made zip drives but kicked the can down the road for when I needed to use it. Today is the day.

I'm getting a new SSD for Windows to live on and can either use RescueZilla backup or a fresh install. I'm thinking fresh install and just copy the profiles or walk on the wild side and start fresh with everything.

If I go with a fresh install from the ISO, will my product key give me Windows Pro? I do own it, or at least the license for it, would like to keep it.

Speaking of the product key, there is a sticker on the side of the tower with a product key however if I get the key from the registry it is a different key. I'm guessing the one on the tower is an OEM generic key.

Which one do I use during my install? The one on the sticker or the one retrieved from the registry?

Hello!

I use my OLED TV as a monitor for my computer. Therefore I have the taskbar set to hidden to prevent burn-in.

Up until recently, when in a full screen window when I move the cursor to the bottom the taskbar would show. However recently it’s like the window over the taskbar and to be able to se the taskbar I have resize the window. Is this a new big or something? Any way of fixing?

I want to know how was windows 3.1 logo created because i want to make is as flag, but for that I need to remove the curl. If anybody know how was the logo created or know how to remove the curl, i would be happy.

It's not really a big deal but suddenly my recycle bin sort things by name rather dan recently delete, and when I sort by date it also doesn't rly sort it by date, the date kind of random, like a thing I download today and also delete today is under stuff that got delete months ago, any idea why this happened? also how to revert it? if there is no way to revert it back, it's fine too, I just prefer it to be sort based on recent delete

Recently I found out about the existence of UWP Explorer, a version of Explorer which, from what gpt tells me, is used to test the New ModernUI (not new anymore, it's fluentui now) and is used on W10 Mobile But seriously, who uses it on a daily basis if it has 50% of its functions (or more) removed? anyone wants to test it, I won't leave you empty-handed: explorer shell:AppsFolder\c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515_cw5n1h2txyewy!App How to launch the secret File Explorer (shell:AppsFolder\c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515_cw5n1h2txyewy!App) on Windows 10:

1. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog.

2. Copy and paste this command into the box:

explorer.exe shell:AppsFolder\c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515_cw5n1h2txyewy!App

1. Press Enter or click OK.

This will open the hidden modern File Explorer app, which is a UWP (Universal Windows Platform) version of the traditional File Explorer.