The really sad thing is the complete absence of support for WinARM when shit goes wrong. I've got one of Dell's Qualcomm 8CX Gen2 based inspirons that broke its windows install when it crashed on boot one day.
Its been sitting on a shelf for almost 8 months and I periodically take it down to see if shits been fixed for restoring its install.
Win11's built in self restore tools attempt to wipe and reinstall windows but ultimately fail and it reverts to the broken state. But this is actually better than 4 months ago when online reinstall function was ENTIRELY broken.
It took until a month or so ago for Microsoft to even offer Win11 ARM iso's on their website that weren't virtual machine files. But these images don't work on my inspirion, I'm guessing they don't bake in 8cx Gen2 support. I can get it to boot into the installer but usb is broken entirely and therefore it can't see anything on the installer usb once its booted. Keep in mind WinARM products have been on the market for years at this point. Its insane vs restoring an x86 laptop.
Dells tools for building a system restore usb are completely broken. I had to go into their text logs to get the web link and authkey to download the win11 iso. Even after building the boot drive it installs a broken version of win11 that can't successfully update, and has a constantly crashing explorer.exe.
I contacted Dell support about this and got strung along for 3 months of back and forth emails before they told me I needed to upgrade to a paid support tier to have a functional laptop again.
And then we get to linux where 8cx Gen2 support is a fucking void no one wants to touch because it has a different device tree than Gen1 or Gen3 which seemingly have some manner of linux support.
I really hope any IT squad that gets suckered into buying SnapdragonX laptops is ready for a world of pain when something goes wrong.
Its been sitting on a shelf for almost 8 months and I periodically take it down to see if shits been fixed for restoring its install.
Win11's built in self restore tools attempt to wipe and reinstall windows but ultimately fail and it reverts to the broken state. But this is actually better than 4 months ago when online reinstall function was ENTIRELY broken.
It took until a month or so ago for Microsoft to even offer Win11 ARM iso's on their website that weren't virtual machine files. But these images don't work on my inspirion, I'm guessing they don't bake in 8cx Gen2 support. I can get it to boot into the installer but usb is broken entirely and therefore it can't see anything on the installer usb once its booted. Keep in mind WinARM products have been on the market for years at this point. Its insane vs restoring an x86 laptop.
Dells tools for building a system restore usb are completely broken. I had to go into their text logs to get the web link and authkey to download the win11 iso. Even after building the boot drive it installs a broken version of win11 that can't successfully update, and has a constantly crashing explorer.exe.
I contacted Dell support about this and got strung along for 3 months of back and forth emails before they told me I needed to upgrade to a paid support tier to have a functional laptop again.
And then we get to linux where 8cx Gen2 support is a fucking void no one wants to touch because it has a different device tree than Gen1 or Gen3 which seemingly have some manner of linux support.
I really hope any IT squad that gets suckered into buying SnapdragonX laptops is ready for a world of pain when something goes wrong.