Brandon has been running Windows 11 on ARM and Reports in.

+ HP Elite Folio
  + wrapped in "vegan leather" and rocking a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, 16GB ram and a 4G modem on the SOC.
+ Got it as a chuck it in the bag and go machine.
+ The general experience is good, the OS is snappy. Performance on the 8cx is around a 10th gen Core i3

+ Visual Studio is very absent though, making the platform a non-starter for people who need that, like Mike.

+ the biggest advantage here is running WSL. When you fire up WSL, you get the ARM versions of the Linux distros. 
+ you get the exact same packages and compile the same binaries as your Raspberry Pi, and run the same docker containers.

+ found this benificial for managing my home Pi cluster.
  + Can test and build software before deploying on the Pis

Hi Chris and Mike,
I'm a bit slow off the mark, but after hearing you both speculate about the dev experience on the Thinkpad with Windows 11 on ARM a couple of episodes ago, I wanted to write in with my own Windows 11 on ARM dev experience.

I own a HP Elite Folio, a bit of an exotic machine that's wrapped in "vegan leather" and rocking a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, 16GB ram and a 4G modem on the SOC. It's an expensive machine, but it also feels expensive, with the best keyboard I've ever used in a laptop (not kidding). I use this for everyday hobby dev and whatnot. My reason for purchasing it was that I just wanted an ambiently available machine that I don't have to fuss about, chuck it in a backpack and go down to the coffee shop without worring about battery life or wifi. Also, I used a hacked Windows RT device back in the day, I'm kinda a nerd about alternative architectures.

The general experience is good, the OS is snappy. Performance on the 8cx is around a 10th gen Core i3, which is not fast on an absolute scale, but entirely suitable for me given the amount of time I spend doing dev on my Thinkpad x220. x86 and x64 emulation is good, I haven't noticed any performance issues, they both feel native, although anything that requires a driver will not function. Most of the stuff I need day to day on Windows has ARM versions, like VS Code, 7zip, notepad++ and Photoshop. Visual Studio is very absent though, making the platform a non-starter for people who need that, like Mike. This isn't going to replace anyones x86 workstation, it's a secondary machine to my Windows and Linux desktop workstations.

For me though, the biggest advantage here is running WSL. When you fire up WSL, you get the ARM versions of the Linux distros. That sounds obvious, but it's not something I was thinking about initially. But this means that you get the exact same packages and compile the same binaries as your Raspberry Pi, and run the same docker containers. I've found this benificial for managing my home Pi cluster, as I can test my docker containers and compile my software directly under WSL, and know it's going to work on my Pi. No cross-arch futzing around. In the past, when I'd compile for my Pi or Pinephone, I'd have a dedicated Pi 4 8GB build server. I don't need that anymore, and this machine is faster than any native Linux ARM machine I can get ahold of.

While I don't think W11oA has a future anywhere near as bright as Apple Silicon machines, I genuinely feel that it's an interesting platform that deserves some attention. I hope this provides a bit of context around what one might expect from the new Thinkpad machine.

Btw, really loving the show these days, it's fast become my favourite. Between Chris' Alex Jones-tier rants and Mike's hot takes, I'm always looking forward to next weeks topics. Keep up the good work, I'm particularly loving the corporate app-store wars coverage.

Cheers,
Brandon