Experiences with ARM SnapDragon Laptops?

This article — from last December— discusses ARM emulation with the latest Windows, and how it is utilized to allow X86 and X64 applications to run on ARM architecture.
Hope this answers your questions. 😃

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation

Most main-stream apps are already compiled for Windows on ARM, however, if you think about it slightly differently, if an app isn't main-stream, chances are that it's developer hasn't compiled it for the latest architecture yet. It may be simply matter of enough people reaching out to dev and requesting the same.
I don't think Bookworm is compiled for Arm laptops yet. Not sure about QRead.
Personally, I want my next machine to be a Windows Arm laptop, seeing the massive battery life improvements and smooth performance for compatible apps, and I am willing to accept foregoing some of my current apps which may be incompatible as I am okay to find workarounds for those kind of challenges, as well as writing polite emails to Dev or submitting issues/comments on Github. Afterall, if Windows Arm becomes the majority, all of these issues will probably go away on their own.

I've heard that they still have lots of graphics issues though? And wsl apparently isn't as stable yet?

Bookworm, the book reading app? Is so lightweight that even with emulation it just should work in my opinion. Could give it a try on my vm on mac.

Gaming. That is what I want my ARM machine to do. When they get that sorted, my next machine will definitely be ARM-based Windows.

Hopefully, folks with personal experience will chime in. It's probably worth browsing the NVDA.io Google group. Doubtless several Surface Laptop 7 owners on there by now. I'll do that when I feel brave enough (I hate navigating Google groups). Like I've said elsewhere, I can barely restrain myself from getting one to save my dogs from all the cursing I do at my Macs, but I'm holding out either for the smaller one due later in the spring or the X2 model toward the end of the year. Here are a few things I've picked up:

Regarding Bookworm, if your friend buys the computer direct, they've got 60 days to try it for themselves without a financial hit. 2 weeks from BestBuy. I tried Googling it, but only find the GoodReads Android app.

I would expect virtually any app that doesn't get into low-level hardware interfacing to work fine with emulation, and I have no qualms about relying on a program that runs that way if I'm not using it 100% of the time.

I think it was someone on this forum mentioning that they're only getting 6ish hours of battery life. About half of forum commenters around the web have the same issue. I suspect it's about how much emulation they rely on, or else screen brightness. NVDA is a 32-bit app that works seamlessly with ARM components, it is said, but I expect battery drain. JAWS claims to have an ARM version, but I doubt that means they rewrote it from the ground up. I talked with a screen reader developer once who told me there's C+ code in there from the mid-90s! So emulation might be a battery factor there, too. I don't think there'll be much of a noticeable performance hit otherwise from either screen reader.

Note that the claim of 16 or 18 hours is for watching locally-stored videos, and probably for the 15-inch model with the bigger battery. It was more like 11, as I recall, when they measured surfing in multiple tabs. Wi-fi adaptors are a battery drainer. All the more impressive, then, that my M1 MBA still goes days and days on a charge with screen brightness set to 0.

I have the Microsoft surface + Copilot laptop with the Snapdragon Elite plus chip. Everything runs great, even older software and games. I haven't heard of the Bookworm app before now, but QRead works fine.
Only one game has given me any trouble at all and I think that says more about that game than the chip architecture. Even that game ran it would just have a weird memory issue sometimes when trying to launch it which doesn't even happen after their more recent updates.

Mileage will very based on specs, but I can easily get through a normal day without needing to top up the charge and just plug it in at night. Definitely my favorite laptop that I've owned, even over my previous Surface Pro 7.

Which game?

I'm going to laugh if he says Mortal Kombat 1.

Hi, I have a surface book7 with the qualcom snap dragon 12 elete processor. I love it apart from one thing, that is both Epson scanners I've tried won't work no matter what I do.
I've Googled the problerm and it seems this is a well known issue with scanners no matter what manufacturer you choose.
On the bright side it does work with my Epson 5200 wifi printer and scanner but as I'm using wifi for the scanning part it is much slower than when I had the scanner hard wired.

Everything else I've run works well.

All the best

The keyboard is great, nicely sized keys, responsive and has tactile indicators on the F4, F8 and power button. By default the applications key is mapped to bring up Copilot, but that can be changed in settings or by pressing the FN key.

I'm not sure what the exact battery is as I rarely run it all the way out, but I would say more than 12 hours unless you're running intensive games or video conferencing.

And the game mentioned previously was Mist World, not Mortal Combat. haha

Fair enough. I mentioned Mortal Kombat 1 because my current laptop has issues with it. For example, and why this is I cannot say, but I can run Mortal Kombat 11, and 1428: Shadows over Silesia, with maxed out graphics, and the games run beautifully. Oh! Same goes for Forza Motorsports. However, Mortal Kombat 1 has to be played with the lowest possible settings, otherwise it just lags terribly. Luckily I can't see the screen, so the graphics don't really matter to me. However, whenever I have friends over and they watch me play, they cringe at the low graphic settings on that particular game.

... and just for transparency sake, this is my laptop:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BY3PGDZR/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1