The PC market entered a new era last month with the launch of Windows laptops powered by 's (NASDAQ: QCOM) Arm-based central processing units (CPUs). This isn't the first attempt to make Windows on Arm work, but this time around, both Microsoft and the leading PC manufacturers have thrown their weight behind the effort.

In general, Qualcomm's CPUs offer solid performance and battery life. Laptops powered by these new chips are getting mostly good reviews, although they don't necessarily blow the competition out of the water. It's a good enough showing that Arm on Windows is likely to stick this time around, with more Arm-based chip designers joining the fray in the coming years.

While laptops powered by Qualcomm's chips offer people new options, there's one major downside that will turn some laptop buyers away. Qualcomm's chips rely on emulation to run applications compiled for the standard x86 version of Windows. While this works a lot of the time, it's far from perfect.

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Source Fool.com