Will Windows 10 (does 8.1) run desktop .exe?

[Adam Kitchen]

With as powerful as phones are becoming... I am thinking about ditching my laptop. Right now, I use and android phone, but I am thinking that cutting back to 1 device might lead me to a Windows Phone, especially with the improvements they have seemingly made in past few years. My understanding is that Windows tablets (not running RT) are able to have legacy programs installed onto them, for instance the full version of Quicken. Does Windows 8.1, or will Windows 10, do that one phones too?

I am not sure how well this would work, but I am thinking about plugging the phone into a monitor and using a Bluetooth keyboard & mouse in those instances where a phone's screen size is just too limiting.

Any thoughts? Frankly, I have not looked at Windows much since 8 first came out.

 

[DCTF]

Wait for the next range of phones. The next ones are the only phones that will fully support the new Continuum features, whereby your universal apps can run straight from the phone to a monitor/kb/mouse and run just like a desktop/laptop computer. Even then, you'd be unwise to expect a phone to replace a laptop - it's a little early for that, although in theory it's going to be possible, depending on what software you need and how you use a computer.

Right now, Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 are two communicative but very separate operating systems.

 

[Ashalinia]

With as powerful as phones are becoming... I am thinking about ditching my laptop. Right now, I use and android phone, but I am thinking that cutting back to 1 device might lead me to a Windows Phone, especially with the improvements they have seemingly made in past few years. My understanding is that Windows tablets (not running RT) are able to have legacy programs installed onto them, for instance the full version of Quicken. Does Windows 8.1, or will Windows 10, do that one phones too?

I am not sure how well this would work, but I am thinking about plugging the phone into a monitor and using a Bluetooth keyboard & mouse in those instances where a phone's screen size is just too limiting.

Any thoughts? Frankly, I have not looked at Windows much since 8 first came out.

Only devices with full Windows are able to run .exe files. Any ARM device (Windows RT 8/8.1 and any version of Windows Phone) is not capable of doing so.

If you want to cut back to one device, I suggest getting a small non-RT Windows tablet.

 

[Elitis]

Only devices with full Windows are able to run .exe files. Any ARM device (Windows RT 8/8.1 and any version of Windows Phone) is not capable of doing so.

If you want to cut back to one device, I suggest getting a small non-RT Windows tablet.

Just a small correction: it's not that ARM devices are incapable of running executable files, it's that they're incapable of running executable files compiled for other instruction sets. ARM (CPUs) uses an instruction set completely different from what Intel (and AMD) use. Theoretically, if a developer recompiled their app for the ARMvx instruction set (instead of the x86-64 instruction set) it would work on ARM devices. Of course, Microsoft would need to allow us to install executable files on Windows Phones, though, which they currently do not. A while back there was a "jailbreak" for Windows RT that allowed users to install executable files, but as I said above, only if that file had been recompiled to work with ARM processors.

 

[Ashalinia]

Just a small correction: it's not that ARM devices are incapable of running executable files, it's that they're incapable of running executable files compiled for other instruction sets. ARM (CPUs) uses an instruction set completely different from what Intel (and AMD) use. Theoretically, if a developer recompiled their app for the ARMvx instruction set (instead of the x86-64 instruction set) it would work on ARM devices. Of course, Microsoft would need to allow us to install executable files on Windows Phones, though, which they currently do not. A while back there was a "jailbreak" for Windows RT that allowed users to install executable files, but as I said above, only if that file had been recompiled to work with ARM processors.

Recompiled and signed unfortunately. The jailbreak was mainly a way of faking signatures in order to get ARM compatible programs to run but as of now, getting that method to work on Windows Phone is a difficult task.