this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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Copilot+ is a reason not to buy one of those laptops. It’s a privacy and security nightmare.
Pretending it's not locked down like the og surface arm devices, I'd consider getting one and totally drop some flavour of linux on it, 3:2 is a great aspect ratio for laptops.
Otherwise yeah, I wouldn't go anywhere near it
Edit: apparently I don't need to pretend, this hasn't been an issue for a while so that's actually great
They're BIOS locked and only accept Windows keys. On the plus side. Tuxedo is developing Linux notebooks with the same powerful, low-power ARM chips.
Yeah, I assumed so, really dislike that you can't do what you want with hardware you own.
Edit: apparently not locked down, which is great
Their source is they made it the fuck up. The most recent devices from previous generations running Windows on ARM weren't boot locked. Only the surface RT was boot locked.
Where did you get this from? Their predecessors weren't UEFI locked. Qualcomm themselves are working on mainline Linux support. Unless you have sources I am calling bullshit.
It is not bootloader locked, Linux support is WIP
EDIT: Source here https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/1dnu5nw/comment/ladiom2/?context=3
If you mean app compatibility, the only programs that will have issues are those needing AVX2
Wasn't even thinking about that, I have an old surface rc2 that's totally useless because MS abandoned it years ago and it's locked down so you can't install an alternate os on it. To be fair, I'm not sure how useful it could be but it's really about the fact I can't do what I want with hardware I own.
Edit: apparently this (locked down) hasn't been an issue for a while so that's actually great
All of them modern Windows for ARM devices released since Windows 10 have been boot unlocked to my knowledge, just with very poor driver support. Lookup Linaros articles on the subject.
Totally out of the loop for sure, definitely basing my assumptions on my experience with the rc2, I'm actually really happy that's changed
Then why didn't you say you're out of the loop when writing the comments? You've just potentially misled a bunch of people for no good reason. These products are controversial enough as is without falsehoods being layered on top.
I meant it to be implied with my comment tying back to the original surface rc devices, I've always really liked the look of the surface line, it's why I bought one and used it heavily (I was also and windows phone and zune early adopter, other things that were actually really nice but got dropped), I personally disliked that I couldn't really do much with it after they dropped support as afaik the rc2 no one has cracked and made that crack public.
And totally willing to admit being wrong, going back and editing my comments to reflect my mistake
Yeah that's fair.
I wouldn't be best impressed if they killed a device and locked you out.
Luckily someone actually did hack it: https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert
Would you be interested in using something like that to run Linux or Windows 10?
Linux for sure, they weren't the beefiest devices even for the time, wow someone finally got the rt2 unlocked fully? Appreciate the link, going to have to dig mine out.
I don't think it will necessarily be an easy process, and their are some limitations. Still it's good to see.
If Framework didn't exist and Linux worked on it, I'd probably get one when my older ThinkPad dies. I'd love something with a ton of battery life, and I don't need much else (my workflow is basically a browser and a terminal).
Is it that different than standard Windows? Either way I'm just hyped that it seems the age of ARM desktops is upon us, I definitely won't be using any "Copilot+" branded OS though.
I remain unconvinced that this is some big paradigm shift, and that the instruction set itself is mostly irrelevant for battery life and performance per watt.
Yes, Apple achieved a big jump with its first M1 at delivering some pretty amazing performance per watt, compared to contemporary chips from Intel.
But a closer look has shown that each successive generation of M-series Apple Silicon has been chasing higher performance at the cost of energy efficiency. Which is fine, but shrinks the gap.
And then, if you look at AMD's low power x86_64 CPUs for laptops, you'll see that they're also able to deliver significant power savings compared to Intel. Comparing like for like, in terms of TSMC node, you see that AMD performance per watt seems to be in line with Apple's. It's just that Apple's comparative advantage in business/legal strategy (not engineering) has them locking up TSMC capacity earlier.
Finally, a comparison of Apple's mobile ARM SoCs to other manufacturers' mobile ARM SoCs (including Qualcomm and Samsung) shows that Apple has a significant performance/efficiency lead over even other ARM chips.
So it's probably not the instruction set. It's just the engineering of the chips themselves, boosted by Apple's business/logistics strategies getting their products to market first.
I’m not following this story closely but my understanding is that Copilot+ ones have a magical special chip (and keyboard button) and they take screenshots every few seconds so you can search your history. But, at least in the beta releases, they didn’t bother to mask passwords or really anything. You could have a private key in a screenshot.
I would hope by the final release, they add the bare minimum of security and encrypt it all but that’s not really good enough. It’s a misguided attempt to shoehorn Copilot into everything when A.I. can’t even wipe its own ass yet. Maybe someday. Probably not, though.
It’s clearly a gimmick and not an improvement. Press the “copilot button” and get help! But the copilot button isn’t a new button. It’s actually left-Shift + Windows key + F23. Modern computers don’t have F23 key but you can simulate it. I sure hope no hackers learn how to do that and search your entire history!
What you are thinking of is Recall, which is a selling point of Copilot+ PCs. As a correction, recall is opt-in, password protected and encrypted in the latest versions. Hitting the Copilot key will launch Copilot, which is a GPT4 AI assistant with image capabilities. Copilot+ itself just means the pc has
Tom's Guide
As well as the copilot key on laptops.
Opt-in is an improvement, but Microsoft does have a history of making nominally opt-in features practically very difficult to avoid.
But what for? It's just as proprietary as x86 and drivers are more of an issue.
Linux support should be here soon