The last time I used one of new always-on PCs, I was intrigued by its potential — why wouldn’t I want to use an actual Windows computer that was always online?…
The last time I used one of new always-on PCs, I was intrigued by its potential — why wouldn’t I want to use an actual Windows computer that was always online? My job would be so much easier if I didn’t need to, I don’t know, stress about WiFi or events or file stories while waiting to get on the subway. Needless to say, the reality didn’t quite live up to the hype.
That machine — the ASUS NovaGo — is still well under a year old, but Qualcomm has taken big steps forward since then with the launch of its Snapdragon 850 chipset for laptops and today’s announcement of its “extreme” new 8cx processor. The company has spent most of the morning here in Hawaii talking about how powerful it is compared to its previous attempts at shoe-horning smartphone-class processors into PCs, and after a little hands-on time with a reference laptop, I’m starting to think Qualcomm is on to something. You’re still never going to use one of these machines for dedicated gaming, but the 8cx now seems more than powerful enough for actually getting your work done.
The first reference laptop I played with was pretty ornately set up: not only did it have loads of tabs open in the early Chromium and Firefox builds for ARM machines, it was also outputting video to two wall-mounted 4K displays and running apps in a virtual machine.
