That was absolutely the case until very recently. Qualcomm bought Nuvia, a start-up that was stacked with former Apple engineers, a few years ago. These processors are just now coming to market. Laptops with these processors are benchmarking around MacBook levels (slightly behind single core, slightly ahead in multi core).

It’s very hard to argue against Apple hardware and battery life. Maybe with windows moving slowly toward ARM they’ll catch up some. It’s going to be very tough though - Apple has full control over their hardware, which meat they can optimize their OS for it.

I really hope the snapdragon x laptops gain some traction. I recently went laptop shopping and what I wanted (good to great display, stays cold, good battery life) line up really well with a MacBook/MB air. I just couldn’t stomach the stupid mark-ups for memory and storage. I wound up with a Lenovo 7x slim. Upgrading to 32 GB memory and 1 TB storage was around $115. The non-emulated performance on windows is solid. Emulated is generally ok for my usage. I’m probably going to try Linux on it when I have a light week, but I’m somewhat wary of the impact that will have on battery life.

My electric chainsaws and weed whacker always start. Eventually our lawn tractor will kick the bucket and I’ll either convert it to electric or buy one.

Depending where you live, it can be really hard to find ethonal free gas. As an added bonus, carburators hate having ethonal sit in them. They’ll develop a varnish. Carbs also don’t like sitting partially dry and getting all the fuel out of them is a massive pain. Yay lawn equipment.

Both. Ethonal is still corrosive and the majority of fuel systems these days are compatible with E15. That said, check your owners manual.