Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

These wireless carriers provide LTE for Windows Always Connected PCs

Brad Jones
By

qualcomm-always-connected-laptop
Microsoft and Qualcomm have announced the cellular carriers that will supply the network capabilities of their upcoming line of Windows 10 Always Connected PCs. These systems are set to use LTE wireless networks to ensure consistent connectivity, whether or not Wi-Fi is available.

China Telecom will supply LTE connectivity in China, Telecom Italia (TIM) will be responsible in Italy, EE has been picked for the U.K., and the U.S. will be accommodated by Sprint and Verizon, according to a report from On MSFT.

Recommended Videos

“With the commitment of leading mobile operators worldwide, the Always Connected PC will offer consumers one of the most comprehensive mobile computing experiences, with always-on connectivity of up-to Gigabit LTE speeds and ‘beyond all-day’ battery life packaged into innovative, thin, and light PC designs,” said Don McGuire, Qualcomm’s vice president of global product marketing, in a press release.

These partnerships are set to get underway in the first half of 2018, and will stretch until at least the end of this year. As well as providing network capabilities, some of the carriers will offer hardware to customers via their retail locations.

“The collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies has resulted in a new category for the PC – the Always Connected PC,” said Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows and devices, Matt Barlow. “With the support of our mobile operator partners, consumers now have the opportunity to enjoy superfast connectivity over LTE networks at an affordable price, anytime and anywhere.”

Windows 10 Always Connected PCs represent an intriguing new attempt to develop laptops that crib some of the advantages of a smartphone – primarily, the fact that they can be woken quickly and conveniently. Asus, HP, and Lenovo are some of the first manufacturers who are on board with the program.

In recent years, we’ve seen Microsoft attempt to modernize the Windows ecosystem by making apps available via the Windows Store. Combined with the touch interfaces supported by many laptops, this can make for an experience that’s equivalent to a smartphone or a tablet.

However, in some ways traditional laptops are still rather sluggish compared to these devices, and this new range of PCs aims to address that gulf. Rock-solid LTE support will certainly go a long way to ensuring their practicality.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Brad Jones
Brad Jones
Contributor
Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…
Adobe Photoshop now runs natively on Windows on ARM, catching up to Apple’s M1
A person using the Surface Pro X.

Photoshop is now fully compatible with Windows 10 PCs like the Surface Pro X that are powered by ARM-based architecture. Adobe announced the news on a support page, noting that as of May 2021, the software now runs natively on 64-bit Windows 10 ARM devices.

Now that Photoshop runs natively on Windows 10 on ARM devices, there should be some performance gains for these Windows users across the board. It no longer runs under emulation, which had severely limited the speed and efficiency of some process-intensive tasks.

Read more
How to reinstall Windows 10
chuwi 13 inch tablet details apollo lake procesor ces 2017 hi13 2 in 1 windows 10 pc

There might come a time when you will need to reinstall Windows 10 on your computer. Maybe you’re trying to fix a severe update problem or get rid of a virus, or perhaps you're prepping to sell your laptop on Craigslist. Whatever the reason might be, reinstalling Windows 10 can be confusing, especially given there are several ways to do it, and each has its own set of pros and cons. That said, let's take a look at how to reinstall Windows 10.
How to back up your data
We strongly recommend that you back up your data before making this kind of significant change to your PC. Windows 10 even makes it easy, so you don't need to search for an additional backup tool. Just follow the necessary File History steps below.

Step 1: Type "Windows update" into the Windows search bar and select Windows Update Settings from the results list. Alternatively, click on the Action Center icon in the lower-right corner of your screen, select All Settings, and look for Update & Security. Once there, select the Backup tab.

Read more
Windows 7 has been dead for a year, but 100 million PCs still use it
Windows 7 Laptop

Despite the end of support for Windows 7, with the operating system no longer getting security updates from Microsoft, millions of people are still holding onto it heading into the end of the year and the start of 2021.

Looking at statistics available for visits to U.S. government websites, as well as data from the firm NetMarketShare, ZDNet reports that approximately 100 million PCs could still be running Windows 7 at the end of 2020. While Windows 10 still shows obvious growth in all the statistics, looking at the numbers, there are still some big holdouts with Windows 7.

Read more